Adventures in school food

My memories of elementary school lunchtime are getting hazy now, but I remember the long blue folding cafeteria tables, the laminated paper ticket with my name on it, those little wax paper cartons of milk, brown for chocolate, red for whole. I remember American chop suey, hard boiled eggs dyed green and served with ham every year on Dr. Seuss' birthday (March 2), and frozen rectangle pizza on Fridays. Dessert was Strawberry Shortcake ice cream bars and apple crisp.

Elementary school is such a formative period for kids. At the time, I thought I was at school just to learn about long division and ancient Greek gods, but now I see how important those years were for my education in other ways. The cafeteria, itself, was a place for me to experiment in what to eat and how to act at the table. My dad volunteered a couple times a week to be a cafeteria monitor, which embarrassed me a little but also made me feel more comfortable amongst my peers and probably encouraged me to be on my best lunchtime behavior (or not).

In middle and high school, we got more freedom to choose and I became a lot more conscientious about the food I was eating. Pretty quickly, I got disillusioned with the hot food options, a monotonous cycle of pasta, pizza and tater tots. I started packing my lunch for school, or eating the most innocuous cafeteria choices: generally, this consisted of a fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt cup and a bagel with peanut butter. Pretty uninspiring.

Going to high school in Finland was a revelation for me. Hot lunch is provided every day, completely free of charge for everyone since the 1940's, and there is no limit set on how much food you can take. My favorite school food was spinach and beet pancakes and thick pea soup with rye crackers. There’s always a hot vegetarian option, and plenty of fresh beets, shredded carrot, and green salads. My high school was also next door to the local milk factory, so we always had fresh milk and "piimä," a kind of sour cultured milk that is supposed to be very nutritious. I looked forward to lunch every day and even when I didn't have class, I still came to school just to see friends and have a delicious meal, courtesy of the Finnish government.

This is a cool article from Buzzfeed that gives examples of school lunches from around the world, including Kenya, Italy, Honduras, and South Korea. Sadly, Finland didn’t make the cut, but the Swedish plate is very similar.  As it also turns out, the MoMA recently held a special lunch series called “Back to School: A Taste of Finland,” where participants could try "typical" Finnish school meals.  These meals were probably of higher quality than what you'd find in the average school in Pori or Helsinki, since the MoMA tends to cater to a more refined audience than Finnish third-graders.  I'm not trying to say that Finnish school food is the best in the world, or that it couldn't be improved.  However, the picture below is a very typical lunch tray.  It features "siskomakkara" or "sister sausage" and potato soup, fresh cucumbers, cheese, buttered rye bread and milk.  Simple yet satisfying!

Source: <http://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/i-decided-to-try-something-different.html>