Canada is the only country in the G7 that doesn’t have a national school food program. Researchers say that as high inflation affects food prices, more children need access to these programs — but community groups say they need stable funding from the federal government to keep everyone fed.
Lunch was never amazing in my Brazilian schools, I still remember the “alien meat”, “color juice”, the burnt rice and beans, leftover soups etc; but they were there when I and many others really needed them so cheers to the program and keep on with it by all means.
I remember having really great meals when I was in a brazilian public kindergarten/elementary school. Many of the recipes weren’t my favourite at the time, but it was a meal. When I returned many years later to a public high school it was really sad to see how it downgraded from actual meals to crackers with “color juice” like you said.
Grew up in Newfoundland, always thought school lunches were some American tv thing like how every ‘struggling’ sitcom family being able to afford an apartment in the city/suburbs. Thought that people complaining about the quality of the free food they were given was some sort of running gag.
Cutting out an important part which is the following line to the exerpt:
That means that while every province has different needs, there isn’t an aligned approach to feeding students across the assortment of existing programs.
There are plenty of programs in Canada, there just isn’t a national one because like a lot of things, it’s left up to the provinces. But there are food programs and school lunches across Canada. There just isn’t a “unified” federal legislation.
I’ve never heard of school lunches in Alberta. It’s entirely likely that our province doesn’t have a school lunch program at all.
So for comparison this program helps 5% of the Alberta student population compared to 60% of the US student population for their program.
It always seems strange when my American spouse talks about school lunches. As a Canadian, it’s entirely out of my experience.
Even eating at school wasn’t a thing for us—when I was in elementary school, only the kids being bussed in (a tiny minority) didn’t go home for lunch.
Y’all went home for lunch in elementary?? In 4 elementary schools I bounced through, not any of them let us leave for any reason.
Small Northern Ontario town in the 1980s. Everyone’s houses were within walking distance of the school, and it was normal for kids as young as five years old to walk home unattended. The school had been built in stages, I think starting in the 1920s, and there was no proper cafeteria, just a basement lunchroom with no facilities for storing or cooking food.
Same here growing up in a small west coast town. There was rarely even a cafeteria that served hot meals until high school and it wasn’t much as it was run by students for economics/business class. They also managed a small store that sold junk food and pop.
I did go to high school in Calgary for a bit but I was mostly in shock by the full time RCMP office in the school and the diversity of students beyond the mostly First Nations and Caucasians I grew up with so the lunch situation wasn’t really something I recall.
I suspect much has changed since then as this was in the early 90s.
I recall leaving school to go to local fast food joints or the convenience store for something to eat as far back as junior high. I’ve seen plenty of this with local convenience stores near schools too.
Recently I was in Cranbrook BC and stopped at a Safeway around lunchtime. I was floored at how many students were there getting lunch. It seemed like it was a big deal for the store as I hadn’t seen such a large deli and sandwich areas in big city Safeways. The high school was across the street so perhaps it acts as a cafeteria in this case.
I’m curious how public food programs are delivered in schools.
As a Canadian, it’s entirely out of my experience.
Hopefully it’s only because your family was financially secure, and you didn’t even notice the kids that needed these lunches getting these lunches. Being able to feed them without making them feel bad about it is awesome.
I can see 3 fresh food delivery trucks infront of a Montréal daycare/K-6 unloading right now. And there will be another 2-5 trucks tomorrow
No, not at all. Most of the time we ate nothing. Sometimes an apple, if they were harvestable locally. We were quite poor in the 80s.
That’s very unfortunate, and further highlights that Canada’s hackjob of school food programs is insufficient in it’s current state. I vaguely recall school breakfasts starting in the Ottawa region in the 90s.
Québec massive augmentation of the food program in 2020 (+$11Mn / 60%) really enamoured me with the province.
