What did your children eat for lunch today? If you were living in France, they would have eaten a healthy four-course hot lunch, designed by nutritionists and prepared by in-school cooks.
Here’s today’s actual school lunch menu for the public schools in the French town of Lyons (no, I am not making this up):
~ Melon
~ Organic spinach-stuffed omelette, topped with croutons and bechamel sauce
~ Emmental Cheese
~ Organic applesauce
All over France, children sit down every day to delicious, inexpensive meals (low-income families pay as little as $1 per child). Learning how to eat well is a central part of their education.
Meanwhile, North American kids often end up filling up on sugary and salty snack foods, which have lots of negative effects on their health and learning ability.
What’s the healthiest lunch you could imagine sending your child to school with? And would they actually eat it?
karenlebillon.com 
What a great lunch menu and I love that learning how to eat well is part of the education in France! We definitely need this here in North America!
We always aim to include at least one fruit and one vegetable in our daughter’s school lunch. We make her lunches as colourful as possible!
I think that children will eat healthy food if that is what they have grown up with!
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I love the idea of dolmadakes – I love them too! After recently making a few recipes with stuffed dates – one stuffed with an olive and the other stuffed with chorizo, I thought maybe this might appeal too? Also a matter of balancing tastes that the children like, but the texture and sweetness of dates.
On another note, one of my friends makes adorable and pretty ‘bento boxes’ for her girls to bring to school, and there are absolutely adorable Japanese lunch boxes and utensils and tools that make the bagged lunches of my youth look so very bland!
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Great idea! Our younger daughter loves olives (and olive dip, even olive bread!). I find if I put a few olives in her veggie container she is more likely to eat everything. She’s so happy about finding something she really likes in her lunch! Funny how kids surprise us with their ‘adult’ tastes sometimes.
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We have two school aged kids – there is no cafeteria in the school and the daily prep of lunches for school is hard… We had a surprise discovery that the kids liked dolmadakes – stuffed grape leaves – and that become one of the regular staples in their school diet, as they are easy to pack. They liked making their own stuffing and the fact that they could do different sizes and add in personalised items!
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