The state of Sweden's school lunches

I am finally back from my trip to Sweden and able to post on my blog again. While I was away, I read a very interesting article in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter about the state of food available in schools and homes for the elderly. For completeness, I am providing a link to the article here (DN Debatt), but it is in Swedish.

When I was in elementary school (in Sweden), we received free lunch in the cafeteria every day. There was always a hot meal prepared by the cafeteria staff, as well as bread and side dishes. Each day, two students from one of the classes were assigned to help the staff prepare lunch and wash dishes. I always thought this was a great system because the food was prepared in-house, not partially cooked, frozen and then shipped in from a central processing center. All of us kids were also learning about the process and what it took to provide lunch for the whole school.

According to this article, this is now a dying practice in Swedish schools, as well as in homes for the elderly. In many cases, lunch is centrally prepared by large catering companies and shipped out to all of the area schools. In addition, students no longer help with the food preparation and clean-up processes because everything has been brought in and must only be heated up. The authors cite many problems with this new system, including the toll this type of food preparation takes on the nutritional value of each ingredient. For example, the authors cite a Dutch study showing how antioxidants found in brussels sprouts and broccoli are destroyed in the various preparation stages, leaving those ingredients devoid of key nutritional value. This new system has also led to parents and students having decreased knowledge about what is actually in the food served at school.

This article served as a wake-up call for me to realize that this is going on all over the world. This is not a problem that we in the US struggle with alone, and it's so important to deal with the issues surrounding school lunches (and meals provided in elderly care homes) before we lose touch with what is going into our bodies at such a young age.