Protecting Children's Basic Right to a Meal: Grassroots Movements Rise in Japan and South Korea to Support School Nutrition Lunches
Who Will Protect Children's "Basic Right to a Meal"? Grassroots Movements Rise in Japan and South Korea to Support School Nutrition Lunches
Though all called "school lunch," the tables of Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea present vastly different worlds; not only is Taiwan, China's school lunch in each county and city perpetually caught in a tug-of-war between "meal fees" and "quality," but the problem of remote small schools "running out of food" keeps surfacing again and again; even Japan, which enacted the School Lunch Act as early as 1954, has seen uneven enforcement across local governments, resulting in enormous disparities in school lunch provision.
Takagi Kazuo, representative for western Japan of the Washoku Kyushoku Support Group, said bluntly, "Though it's supposed to be children's school lunch, it's decided entirely by adults' political wrangling."
