In Finland, school meals are free and only include locally sourced products.

For 70 years, Finland has served free meals to all students. And now it's also awarding those who prepare them with a national competition. According to Finnish school rules, the cafeteria must be bright and welcoming. Snack vending machines are prohibited.

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free school meals in Finland

FREE SCHOOL MEALS IN FINLAND

In Finland, textbooks and school canteen are free for all years of compulsory schooling. Our Constitution also provides for free compulsory education, according to the principle of giving the poorest the means to be able to educate themselves, but this rule in practice Italy it is not applied.

ALSO READ: School cafeterias: €360 worth of food is wasted every day. And then there's no money for daycare centers.

FINNISH METHOD FOR SCHOOL CANTEENS

Le free school lunches of the Finnish national education system represent an excellent example to imitate. Since 1948, in fact, the country has served one free meal a day to all students, aged 6 to 18, who attend the compulsory schoolThis is a democratic measure that has never been abandoned over the years and has even improved today, moving from simple soups From the early days, to much more varied, balanced dishes, monitored by nutritionists. By law, school lunches must cover a third of children's daily caloric needs, following established guidelines that also indicate the precise structure: half vegetables, a quarter protein, and a quarter cereals.

free school meals Finland 1

ADVANTAGES OF SCHOOL CANTEENS WITH THE FINNISH METHOD

For eight years there has also been a biennial national competition dedicated to collective catering chef, an initiative that serves to discover new recipes to then propose to all the schools in the country. 2018 The competition awarded three chefs from Joensuu, a small town in eastern Finland. The menu presented in Rome, at the residence of Ambassador Janne Taalas, had an international basis. chicken and vegetable paella, chickpea hummus, Chinese cabbage salad, but with Finnish flavors, such as apple juice and rapeseed oil, a plant rich in Omega-3.

In order to keep prices down, considering that each school meal should not cost more than one euro, the winning chefs, Meerit Karki, Leena Koponen and Anne Kinnunen explained that they use as much as possible local products: «Potatoes, turnips, tubers, which are tasty here because they grow slowly, mushrooms and berries, apples, herbs, meat and fish. We choose imported vegetables, fresh ones cost too much."

TO KNOW MORE: School cafeterias, ugh! They don't exist for half the students. This makes school unfair.

Free meals in Finnish school cafeterias

I menu The meals vary according to the seasons, every five weeks, and combine Nordic dishes, such as baked barley porridge with compote berries, the favorite of Finnish children, to pasta. allergies and intolerances must be communicated and for two years it has also existed a vegetarian option: out of 900 thousand meals served every day, 10 percent are "special". Finally, in Finnish schools, snack vending machines are banned and the canteens must be "bright and welcoming”. The results of these measures are rates of childhood obesity declining and excellent scores in international tests.

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