ID :
11881
Tue, 07/08/2008 - 15:15
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https://oananews.org//node/11881
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Rising food prices hit school lunch menus in Japan
TOKYO, July 8 (Kyodo) - Dietician Hatsuki Umemoto's heart skipped a beat when a schoolchild said, ''You give us 'komatsuna' (Japanese mustard spinach) every day.''The 23-year-old woman in charge of designing the lunch menu at a primary school in the Akasaka district in Tokyo's Minato Ward has opted for inexpensive komatsuna to replace spinach and other vegetables that have risen in price recently.
Hit hard by the spiraling cost of foodstuffs, Japanese school officials say they are struggling to provide a nutritious midday meal for pupils.
Purchasing cheaper produce is not necessarily an option, given the importance attached to dietary education in Japan and a food-poisoning scandal earlier this year involving Chinese-made ''gyoza'' dumplings.
To cope with the problem, some local municipalities have decided to come up with supplementary budgets. In June, for example, Chuo and Adachi wards in Tokyo approved additional sums of 7.9 million yen and 37 million yen, respectively, for school lunches.
A Chuo Ward official said the ward has been shifting from beef to pork, and serving bean sprouts as its vegetable dish. However, there is only so much the ward can do, resulting in a tendency for menus to stay pretty much fixed.
Prices of many types of vegetables, bread and other wheat-based foods and dairy products have risen across the board since last year, forcing many schools to halve the number of days a month they offer noodles to two or three, and switch to rice instead. They have also turned to low-priced fruits for dessert.
The Minato Ward office has started to allocate a budget for the purchase of organic vegetables, but Umemoto said she cannot easily buy the foods she wants boys and girls to eat because of the price tag. She said school lunch is a ''great pleasure'' for children.
Shinagawa Ward will increase the price of school lunches by 20-35 yen per meal from 210-245 yen for elementary school pupils and 300 yen for junior high students in September. The municipality's decision is considered unusual because it will take effect during the April-March academic year.
A Shinagawa Ward education board official said, ''We are particular about using vegetables grown using low levels of agrochemicals. We'd like to maintain high-quality school lunches.''Meanwhile, the city of Ishioka in Ibaraki Prefecture decided to cancel midday meals at primary and middle schools under municipal management on the last day of the first semester in July and the opening day of the second semester in September.
An official said the municipality is reluctantly going to take the action due to the uncertainty surrounding the city's school lunch program.
An official in charge of school lunches in another local government said he is unable to come up with an effective way to counteract soaring food costs ''because we cannot use inexpensive Chinese frozen foodstuffs since the poisoning scandal.''A 40-year-old homemaker in Shinagawa Ward said the municipality's decision to hike school lunch prices is understandable in light of the mounting cost of ingredients.
''I experience the rising prices for myself when I go shopping,'' she said. ''My son eats some food on the school lunch menu that he doesn't like. But he may not eat it if the quality and taste worsen.''
Hit hard by the spiraling cost of foodstuffs, Japanese school officials say they are struggling to provide a nutritious midday meal for pupils.
Purchasing cheaper produce is not necessarily an option, given the importance attached to dietary education in Japan and a food-poisoning scandal earlier this year involving Chinese-made ''gyoza'' dumplings.
To cope with the problem, some local municipalities have decided to come up with supplementary budgets. In June, for example, Chuo and Adachi wards in Tokyo approved additional sums of 7.9 million yen and 37 million yen, respectively, for school lunches.
A Chuo Ward official said the ward has been shifting from beef to pork, and serving bean sprouts as its vegetable dish. However, there is only so much the ward can do, resulting in a tendency for menus to stay pretty much fixed.
Prices of many types of vegetables, bread and other wheat-based foods and dairy products have risen across the board since last year, forcing many schools to halve the number of days a month they offer noodles to two or three, and switch to rice instead. They have also turned to low-priced fruits for dessert.
The Minato Ward office has started to allocate a budget for the purchase of organic vegetables, but Umemoto said she cannot easily buy the foods she wants boys and girls to eat because of the price tag. She said school lunch is a ''great pleasure'' for children.
Shinagawa Ward will increase the price of school lunches by 20-35 yen per meal from 210-245 yen for elementary school pupils and 300 yen for junior high students in September. The municipality's decision is considered unusual because it will take effect during the April-March academic year.
A Shinagawa Ward education board official said, ''We are particular about using vegetables grown using low levels of agrochemicals. We'd like to maintain high-quality school lunches.''Meanwhile, the city of Ishioka in Ibaraki Prefecture decided to cancel midday meals at primary and middle schools under municipal management on the last day of the first semester in July and the opening day of the second semester in September.
An official said the municipality is reluctantly going to take the action due to the uncertainty surrounding the city's school lunch program.
An official in charge of school lunches in another local government said he is unable to come up with an effective way to counteract soaring food costs ''because we cannot use inexpensive Chinese frozen foodstuffs since the poisoning scandal.''A 40-year-old homemaker in Shinagawa Ward said the municipality's decision to hike school lunch prices is understandable in light of the mounting cost of ingredients.
''I experience the rising prices for myself when I go shopping,'' she said. ''My son eats some food on the school lunch menu that he doesn't like. But he may not eat it if the quality and taste worsen.''
