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.
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.
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.
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.
Did you ask the Calgary education board what their programs are? The provincial one is just one default program, if you read further you’ll find other programs supported by municipality/city/provincial funding.
I’m not against having federal standards and/or funding, but it’s not like there aren’t any programs.
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.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !canada@lemmy.ca
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.
It always seems strange when my American spouse talks about school lunches. As a Canadian, it’s entirely out of my experience.
Disappointed but can confirm. There was never a single food fight during my entire K - 12 education. It was massively disappointing.
I was led to belive food fights would be a bi weekly occurrence by our media overlords. They lied.
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.
Some of us went home, but the school also offered a program - Vancouver, BC
I’m from small town, Saskatchewan and most of the kids in town went home for lunch.
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.
Cutting out an important part which is the following line to the exerpt:
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.
The same in BC, as far as I’m aware.
You didn’t look very far imo
I guess we’ll never know!
So for comparison this program helps 5% of the Alberta student population compared to 60% of the US student population for their program.
Did you ask the Calgary education board what their programs are? The provincial one is just one default program, if you read further you’ll find other programs supported by municipality/city/provincial funding.
I’m not against having federal standards and/or funding, but it’s not like there aren’t any programs.
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.