Japan pushes shokuiku to bring young people closer to washoku, mending the break in dietary culture

The Da-xiang Shokuiku Association, which has long followed domestic school lunch issues, recently held the "Taiwan-Japan-Korea Action Connection - Food and Agriculture Reform Vision Workshop," inviting Akio Kagawa, president of Japan Women's University, Mizue Okui, school dietitian in Hyogo Prefecture, South Korea's Special Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Affairs Secretary-General Oh Hyun-seok and committee member Kwak Geum-soon, Hu Chung-yi, Director-General of the Agriculture and Food Agency, and Chen Chieh-ting, researcher at the Agricultural Science and Technology Research Institute's Policy Center, among others, to share the opportunities and challenges the three countries face from school lunches to the agri-food field. (The full article is long and split into two parts; this article focuses on Japan's experience. For the Taiwan and Korea sharing, please click here.)

Japan's number one school lunch: Ashiya City

Mizue Okui, dietitian at Yamate Junior High School in Ashiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, uses Ashiya City's school lunches as an example to explain how to use local ingredients within a limited budget and cook nutritious and delicious lunches, while also integrating shokuiku into different subjects at school. The local school lunches were even published as a cookbook in 2017, and a movie themed on school lunches is even planned for 2020.

Ashiya City has a total of 8 elementary schools and 3 junior high schools, with 4,700 elementary students and 1,600 junior high students, about 6,300 in total; the budget per school lunch is 250 yen for elementary school (about NT$70) and 290 yen for junior high school (about NT$81); Ashiya City's school lunches use independent menus and are prepared separately rather than as a central kitchen service, and each school has a dedicated dietitian and team responsible for operations.

The Ashiya City Board of Education holds a menu study meeting every month, gathering dietitians from each school for discussion, and also holds the "Ashiya City School Lunch Exhibition" every year, offering school lunch tastings, kitchen rotary kettles, how to eat a whole fish, and displays of spices used in lunches. When lunchtime comes each day, students and staff can hardly wait: "This is Japan's number one delicious school lunch!"

Features: local ingredients, seasonal menus, handmade preparation, can be cooked at home

School lunches in the city have four major features: no frozen processed foods, recipes usable at the family dining table, dishes that follow the seasons and festivals, and the use of local ingredients. No frozen processed foods are used at all, and everything is handmade. Okui explained that croquettes go through the complete process from steaming and mashing potatoes to stir-frying meat and shaping them; shiratama dumplings are kneaded from shiratamako and tofu; and inari sushi is made from scratch, from simmering the tofu pouches to the gomoku rice.

Ashiya City has only 5 farming households, and no fisheries at all, so the use of local ingredients has expanded to Hyogo City's "local production for local consumption," including oils, for which they do not choose non-domestic soybean salad oil but rather rice bran oil, making different dishes according to different seasonal ingredients and festivals. For example, in spring people enjoy flower viewing and eat bamboo shoots, in summer they eat cold noodles and snakehead fish, in autumn there are chestnuts, persimmons, and saury, and in winter they eat New Year dishes.

Okui explained that after Yamate Junior High School's daily school lunch is prepared, it is immediately photographed to create a meal service chart. It is completed at 12 o'clock, and includes ingredients, nutritional components, and preparation methods. The dishes shown are all things that can be made at home, and this information is broadcast throughout the school.

Shokuiku education at the dining table: delicious, no waste, fun

Besides eating, school lunches can also play a shokuiku role. Children participate in the preparatory work of making lunch. Okui explained that if children experience even just a part of it, they feel as though they prepared the whole school's lunch, develop gratitude toward the kitchen staff, overcome fear of ingredients they dare not eat, and cherish food more.

"The children are all used to it. After receiving a mandarin orange, they peel the skin clean first." Okui explained that the citrus jam provided at each school comes from the peels of the mandarin oranges served as dessert fruit, increasing the utilization rate of ingredients. Elementary school children learn that orange peels can be made into jam, and junior high students all share this with their families when they go home.

Sixth-grade elementary school students can use computers to choose their own meal combinations. The software used allows them to select a staple, main dish, and side dish, and simply calculate nutritional components. After calculating, they can immediately see the nutrition of the selected dishes. Okui observed: even though it is just a game, the children all care very much about the result of the combination and will keep trying until the nutrition is balanced.

Dishes appearing at lunch are linked with books, so that children also become interested in food through reading; when the third-year junior high students' graduation trip is to Okinawa, Okinawan dishes are added to lunch that week, called "Okinawa Week"; dishes also appear that reflect the opposing countries in the Olympics and World Cup, and the lunch styles of different eras, introducing lunches from countries around the world and from various periods in history; on Valentine's Day, Christmas, and other occasions there are special handmade desserts.

From the classroom to the home and the kitchen, shokuiku education that teachers also love

Before providing shokuiku to children, they first get faculty and staff interested in food. During summer vacation, they invite chefs to hold Italian cooking classes for faculty and staff to participate in and taste. Okui explained that after participating, the faculty and staff all feel very joyful.

Shokuiku and school subjects have linked teaching. Okui explained that shokuiku is integrated into various subjects in elementary and junior high school, for example: in fourth-grade art class they make onion plant dyeing, in fifth-grade home economics class they teach how to brew tea, in sixth-grade social studies class there is a tea ceremony experience, in sixth-grade math class they calculate the sugar content of sugary drinks, and in ninth-grade physics and chemistry class there are course elements on acids and bases.

In addition to lunch, they also collaborate with outside parties on shokuiku, such as jointly planning Daikon Week with the JA Hyogo Rokko Youth Conference, making 2-3 daikon dishes in one lunch, giving every student in the school a daikon with leaves to take home and cook, and even teaching