School food education is an inescapable social responsibility of schools

Header image/ Hsinchu Hukou Hexing Elementary School actively combines nutrition lunch with the promotion of school food education; its approach is worth emulating. Photo/ Wang Wen-hao

In response to the school lunch bribery scandal involving more than one hundred elementary and middle schools, Chang Jung-hui, chairman of the National Association of Principals, once took the lead in responding that school lunches should not be the responsibility of schools, that parents should take on the responsibility, and that students should go home at noon to eat before returning to school, or that lunch boxes should all be prepared by parents. Such shirking words not only fail to consider the current reality of the widespread dual-income family in modern society, but also reveal that once school lunches are no longer profitable, they instantly become a burden on schools.

Why should schools be responsible for school lunches?

School lunches in Taiwan began in ROC year 40, when the United States, in order to win over anti-communist countries, provided food aid to pro-American countries. Taiwan therefore gradually accepted Western dietary culture and nutrition concepts, and with the acceleration of postwar industrialization, Taiwan's traditional dietary culture was gradually distorted, making the distance between food production, supply and consumption ever greater and ever more unfamiliar. The problem must of course be solved at the root. Schools should not only provide school lunches, but should also seriously treat children's diet as part of education.

Why should food education start from childhood?

Take Japan as an example. In the Meiji Restoration Westernization movement, school lunches were deeply rooted in promoting Western food to strengthen children's physiques. In the United Kingdom, after World War II, in order to cultivate domestic dairy farmers and break away from American food aid, Britain promoted a nationwide milk-drinking campaign, and elementary school students were even forced to drink it every day.

In France and Northern Europe, many kindergartens and elementary schools allow students to drink only water; the only beverage they may bring is water, and they may not even bring mineral water, in order to convey the habit of cherishing water resources and drinking healthily. Changes in dietary habits absolutely cannot happen overnight; only by starting from childhood can they take root, and the participation of the education system is indispensable.

What price have we paid for dietary problems?

Recently, dietary problems in various European and American countries have attracted government attention. Modern civilization diseases caused by dietary problems such as overnutrition, nutritional imbalance and distorted nutritional values, including obesity, anorexia and cardiovascular disease, have become severe fiscal and social burdens for various countries.

In addition, the prevalence of eating out in industrial society and the disappearance of traditional cooking culture have facilitated the rise of industrial foods, and the risk that food additives harm human health has increased. More importantly, large food industries dominate everything; in pursuit of high profits, their production processes exploit producers and destroy the environment. For example, palm oil is a source of vegetable oil for cheap industrial foods, yet it comes at the cost of destroying rainforests; or take coffee: cheap coffee takes away the future and hope of farmers' families. These are by no means sustainable ways.

The positive practical functions brought by food education!

European and American scholars have pointed out in research that providing correct food education early can effectively reduce social costs and the burden on government. Therefore, they have successively legislated to promote food education on campus. Such food education includes transparency of food sources, food miles, and social justice in food production.

The UK's food policy white paper even recommended having dedicated teachers responsible for children's food education, opening up farmland on campus, giving students the opportunity to grow vegetables and fruits themselves, promoting schools to order locally produced ingredients from environmentally friendly production as the source of school lunches, and enhancing children's identification with the nation's land. The well-known British chef Jamie Oliver took the lead in teaching elementary school students correct food knowledge, not only correcting British schoolchildren's bad habit of craving processed foods, but also setting off a wave of revolution in the campus food movement.

Image source / Food for Life

The urgency of food education in Taiwan!

Taiwan's agricultural problems are not simple; they are embedded in the context of international development, while domestically they are always manipulated by politicians in elections and drag on endlessly. Whenever elections come around, the old farmer allowance becomes an act of vote-buying in which politicians recklessly add more. Since the government has no forward-looking policy to solve the fact of domestic agriculture's decline, increasing the old farmer allowance is merely another policy of destroying agriculture, and an incompetent policy must nevertheless be paid for by all the people.

Next year's budget for the old farmer allowance will be as high as 57.54 billion yuan, while the central budget subsidy for children's school lunches is only a bit over 800 million yuan. Why not simply use the entire old farmer allowance budget to subsidize children's school lunches, along with complete supporting food education and increased procurement of locally grown, environmentally friendly crops? This would not only take care of the child welfare and dietary issues that dual-income families worry about, but is also expected to increase employment in agriculture and education and enhance the sustainable development of Taiwan's agriculture.

Food is a daily necessity for sustaining human life, and diet is a uniquely human social behavior. Whether for cultivating national identity or for ethics and morality, food holds key significance. Today, in Taiwan's school lunch corruption scandal involving principals, not only is children's nutrition ignored, but the social responsibility of schools is also evaded. The response of the National Association of Principals precisely explains the fundamental cause of why bad practices in Taiwan's society are not rectified.

Forward-looking food education is a global trend. School lunches are not only an important part of food education, but because their scope of influence is broad, they are already a social responsibility. Educational institutions are absolutely duty-bound. Now is precisely the best time for food education to be discussed at the policy level. (The author of this article is Yu Wan-ju, candidate representative for the 8th Legislative Yuan election in Taipei City's 8th electoral district, Green Party)