Nearly six million primary and secondary school students eat in the canteen every day. If the quality was not always there until the 2000s, things are improving little by little, the law now requires 50% of sustainable products on children’s plates, including a fifth from agriculture organic and, at least once a week, a vegetarian menu.
Some municipalities have been pioneers in this area. Mouans-Sartoux, for example, near Cannes in the Alpes-Maritimes, has set up 100% organic school catering for 10 years, thanks to a municipal farm. Clearly, the city finances, for its three schools, three cooks and, more surprisingly, three gardeners.
Gilles Pérole, education assistant: “We are lucky to be in a region where we produce good vegetables, and they don’t stay in the fridge for days and days before being eaten.”
For other products, the city provides supplies less than 200 kilometers away. The 1200 daily meals, entirely organic, do not cost more than elsewhere.
If this example is increasingly followed, nearly half of the communities – municipalities for schools, departments for colleges and regions for high schools – still prefer to delegate the service to private catering companies. The role of parents is therefore essential.
According to Sandra Franrenet, who wrote The black book of school canteens (published in 2018): “When everyone trusts without looking, it can lead to the worst practices. It is everyone’s role to go and see if the catering is conceded or prepared on site, if there is a central kitchen or kitchens in the schools, and when it is prepared in the central kitchen, whether the mixture is hot or cold.”
Why not ask your child to take a picture of their plate. The image is often more telling than the menu sent by email to families. Children are the citizens of tomorrow, they must be alerted to quality, taste, and the fight against waste.