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It’s not like Ivan Jensen, 13, doesn’t appreciate his parents packing him a lunch. It’s just that, well, he isn’t always thrilled with what’s in them.
The Longyearbyen School student – along with most, if not all of his classmates – are abandoning whatever they usually pack (or don’t) in favor of a hot lunch program being provided for the first time on a two-week trial basis between Nov. 16 and 27.
“It’s great,” Jensen said. “I think we study better and we’re not having boring lunches.”
The school, like others in Norway, offers fruit for the taking, but lacks a regular meal program. The trial project is part of a larger effort in Norway, with a survey by the Norwegian Directorate of Health indicating only one in four students packs a lunch.
“It takes too much time in the morning,” said Sondre Stormoen, 15, a Longyearbyen student who, like many of his classmates, say school gets out early enough in the afternoon that not bringing a lunch isn’t a problem.
Still, all of the students interviewed voiced enthusiasm about the lunch program and said they’d like to see it continue on a regular basis. And while they were all over the maps in terms of their favorite meal served so far, they were far less vocal about what they didn’t like.
“All the food is good,” said Ulysses Bailosado, 16.
Families were asked to pay 395 kroner for each student eating meals during the two-week period. Bailosado said he believes that amount, if proportionately increased to cover a full school year, would be worth the quality of meals served.
Menu items during the first week included goulash soup, pasta carbonara chicken salad with curry dressing, lapskaus stew. and a ham/cheese/tomato baguette. Heidi Ervik, preparing the food with fellow Svalbard Catering chef Daniel Wilton, said they didn’t come up with any new or radical items.
“It should be healthy and something the kids will like,” she said.
Ervik said she’s like the see the program made permanent and, while that would obviously be good for business, there are other reasons as well.
“I think it’s a good thing to have lunch together,” she said. “It’s not just the food. It’s a social thing as well.”
What did the lunch consist of?
On that day it was lapskaus (Norwegian stew, for those unfamiliar with the dish). They also had regular bread and flatbread out (plus fruit, I think) as a filler. Most of the students ate all of it, which is more than I can say for the stew I got in school back when I was in the U.S. Then again, Google “school lunches from around the world” and you’ll see my renounced homeland easily ranks among the worst, maybe because they have roughly the same budget and food suppliers as prisons. Come to think of it, the rules are increasingly similar as well.
(OK, that was way more information than you asked for – or wanted, I’m guessing.)
Thsi testproject has been a SUCCESS. We hope to get it founded so it can be realised 100 % from january NeXT year. We have had so much positive responce from students, teachers and parents.
André – leader of FAU at LYB School.
Next year: 2016 or 2017? If you’re planning a full-time program starting next month I’d definitely like to talk to you about it since that would be a remarkably fast change to a long-standing tradition.