Conservation Comment: Let's do lunch the healthy French way

French children enjoying their school lunch. Photo / Supplied

New Zealand has high levels of obesity comparing unfavourably with other developed countries such as France. The causes are multi-factorial and reversing this will not be easy.

Something to consider in our eating habits is the approach to lunch in New Zealand. Recent research indicates that lunch should be the most important meal of the day.
I lived in Montesquie-Volvestre in France for many years — where rates of obesity are much lower — and was always impressed by how seriously the French took their lunch. This is also well supported in schools, as it is across Europe.

As throughout France, the school lunch menus for the Montesquieu-Volvestre kindergarten and primary school for the week ahead are posted on the town hall notice board — and the council website up to two months in advance.

Meals are prepared by council employees, mostly using fresh local ingredients that are often organic. Menus are not allowed to be repeated during the month and are vetted by a dietitian to ensure regulations for nutritional balance are met. There are strict limits on sugar and fat content together with portion sizes.

A typical recent menu included a mozzarella and tomato salad starter, Toulouse sausage with green beans as main, a piece of cheese and a small chocolate éclair as dessert. This can be supplemented by bread, which is freely available, and filtered tap water is available to drink.

Children have to sit to eat the supervised meal and must be allowed at least 30 minutes to eat it. All this for $5.60. Poorer pupils are eligible for subsidies and in many cases free meals. Meal take-up, although optional, is almost 100 per cent.

Similar meal provision is available throughout a French pupil's school career and continues afterwards in tertiary institutions and into the workplace with affordable nutritious lunchtime meals.

Most large workplaces have cafeterias. In smaller workplaces employees are expected to go home for lunch. Where this is not possible and when an employee is away from their usual place of work then the employer is obliged to provide a cooked meal.

Thus, across France one finds restaurants offering affordable lunchtime set menus to meet this demand. For example, a builder and his employees working away from their home base would leave the construction site at lunchtime to sit down to a cooked meal together at one of these many restaurants.

Employers have to provide an employee with a lunch break of at least an hour. Lunch is a serious business in France.

The contrast with the position in Aotearoa is stark. Kiwi tamariki begin their school lives with a lunchbox. Whether it is filled with nutritious food to sustain growing children can be problematic.

Incredibly, the statutory unpaid lunch break required is just 30 minutes. This essentially precludes the possibility of eating a cooked meal. Snacking becomes almost inevitable.

Many parents do a great job but a sizeable number, for whatever reason, don't. Some schools and teachers, together with sponsors, provide for the less fortunate tamariki through various school food programmes. These initiatives, while laudable, are not universal and unlikely to match the nutritional value of the French school lunch. Poor eating habits in the early years risk becoming entrenched.

When Kiwis venture out into the wider world, few workplaces have canteens offering affordable, nutritious lunches. Lunch often becomes a snatched affair with many even choosing to work through some or all of their lunch break.

Incredibly, the statutory unpaid lunch break required is just 30 minutes. This essentially precludes the possibility of eating a cooked meal. Snacking becomes almost inevitable.

Serious consideration should be given to offering nutritious, cooked lunches to all pre-school and school pupils in New Zealand as a major step towards improving eating habits, reversing the trends in obesity and combating child inequality.

David Hughes moved to Whanganui after working for 35 years in England, Australia, New Caledonia, France and other countries. He works as a translator from French into English and is involved in a project growing heritage wheat varieties.