Is Eating Organic Fruit Really That Hard? A Sixth-Grader's Lunch Challenge

Doing Our Own School Lunch Survey

At a time when food safety warnings keep flashing red, a group of sixth graders at the Elementary School Affiliated with National Chiayi University in Chiayi City is working hard to improve the quality of their school lunches. The school offers a "information literacy" class for sixth graders; last year's theme was the "international food crisis," and students not only had to gather information on the topic but also develop the ability to identify problems, exercise a sense of social responsibility, and work in groups to solve food-related problems in daily life.

The team "Tongxin Yiding Dui" (One Heart, One Team), made up of students Huang Yizhen, Lin Weizhe, Qin Qianhui, Huang Jingwei, Li Qifei, Lin Pinxi, and Zhang Kaijing, noticed several waves of excessive pesticide residues in school lunches last year. To help teachers and students eat with greater peace of mind, they decided to follow the spirit of Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, who bravely protected her homeland and refused to let pesticides or insecticides pollute and harm the ecological environment, so that the whole school could have safe, toxin-free school lunches.

They set their goal as "an organic fruit day once every two months," and their first step was to visit the school lunch secretary, Teacher He Yazhen, to learn how school lunch vendors are selected and how the budget works. Qin Qianhui said, "I've eaten school lunch for six years, but only now do I know that the vendor is changed every ten weeks, and the students never even noticed." She also thought it was inappropriate for the school to use the lunch surplus to buy backup eco-friendly tableware. "Eco-friendly tableware should be brought by the teachers and students themselves; there's no need to buy extra. It would be better to use the surplus to improve lunch quality. The current lunch is already very good, an 80 out of 100, and the missing 20 points have to be made up by improving the ingredients. For example, using toxin-free fruit would let everyone eat more healthily."

They also arranged to interview a dietitian from the Chiayi City Government to learn about lunch inspection methods. Huang Yizhen said, "As soon as we learned the city government dietitian was coming to school to do an inspection, we ran straight to the kitchen, asking questions and taking notes at the same time. It turned out the dietitian doesn't come for fixed inspections but carries them out as spot checks. We think the news about pesticide residues really shook Chiayi, this major agricultural county, and also pushed the government to handle lunch safety issues more actively."

To better understand what elementary school students think about the fruits and vegetables in school lunch, the group also designed a questionnaire, drawing three students from each of the fifteen classes in grades four, five, and six to take part in face-to-face interviews and written questionnaires. Li Qifei found that many students in the questionnaire didn't understand at all what "toxin-free agriculture" is, and some even opposed it, worried that it would be expensive. "But this has to do with our health. You can't just assume the cheapest is best. Luckily, fortunately, most of our classmates agreed with our idea."

An Elementary Schooler's Dream of Toxin-Free Fruit

The final step was to discuss the feasibility of implementing the plan with the principal. Lin Pinxi said, "The principal quite agreed with our idea and also agreed to use the lunch surplus to buy toxin-free fruit, on the condition that we find farmers who can work with us." This decision greatly boosted their confidence, and they quickly worked out an ordering plan: an organic fruit day once every two months, requiring more than 900 portions each time, and they hoped the fruit would mainly be seasonal and locally grown.

Huang Yizhen said, "We found information about Leezen online, and after contacting them we learned they couldn't supply such a large quantity of fruit. They suggested we contact farmers directly, and that was when we realized our plan might run into trouble. That feeling was like walking down stairs: with every sentence we heard, we went down another step, until by the time we hung up the phone, it felt like a whole semester's effort had been wasted! We understood that reality was far beyond what we had imagined, but we had never thought the problem would be not being able to find a supplier."

Li Qifei said, "Because not many of our parents work in agriculture, we hadn't considered the issue of 'quantity.' At the time we went on to contact three more farmers and were turned down by all of them, and everyone wanted to give up. This matter frustrated us a lot, but it also taught us that simply thinking about it isn't workable; you have to actually do it to know where the difficulties lie! Although the plan has not succeeded so far, we have already promoted the concept of organic fruits and vegetables to the whole school."

Although the plan is currently stuck, the soon-to-graduate students have not given up. They are still looking for farmers who might be able to cooperate, hoping to change the lunch content for their younger schoolmates. Their guiding teacher, Shen Guizhi, said, "We're very happy that the children can not only step outside the classroom and improve problems in daily life, but also hold on to their own convictions. To reduce their carbon footprint, they declined bananas offered by farmers in other counties and cities and hoped to focus on farmers in Yunlin, Chiayi, and Tainan." The students also came up with new strategies, such as finding different farmers by grade level to supply different fruits and reduce the burden on farmers. In addition, at first they only managed to contact one farmer through Leezen; if they could find more farmers through other channels, perhaps their "toxin-free fruit dream" would not be so hard to realize.

Huang Yizhen said earnestly, "During this time, many people thought we were just elementary school students and didn't quite believe we were serious about carrying out the plan, but pesticide residues keep being detected in children's school lunches, and we all feel our health is under threat. Before we graduate in June, we will keep looking for farmers who can work with us, so this plan has a proper beginning and end."