Free organic school meal for show

With the price of fresh food soaring 30.2 percent last month, public schools are fearful of school meal preparation when the new semester starts in March. North Chungcheong Province, which starts providing free lunches from this year, will have to manage with a budget of 74 billion won (66.2 million dollars) for the year. Prices have risen sharply, however, and the quality of the meals is expected to drop. If the meals are not free, schools could ask parents to make up for the increase in prices. Since the province announced that it would offer free school meals, it cannot ask parents for help.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, which starts offering free meals at elementary schools from next month, held an event to showcase a free organic and healthy meal Wednesday. Superintendent Kwak No-hyun and students sampled a new kind of meal different from that served in the past. The office said it used domestic produce such as organic rice in making the meal, excluded artificial flavor enhancers, and made it low in salt, sugar and fat. The quality of the meal consisting of “gujeolpan (platter of nine delicacies),” “neobiani (grilled beef with soy sauce),” “deulggae miyeokguk (sea mustard soup with perilla),” and “naengi doenjangguk (bean paste soup with shepherd’s purse)” was higher than that of previous school lunches. A similar menu will be provided free at schools in the upcoming semester.

This is pretty confusing because while North Chungcheong fears lower quality of meals, Seoul is inflating expectations. To make an “organic meal” as pledged by the Seoul education office requires the use of organic ingredients 50 to 250 percent more expensive than regular ones. It is doubtful whether the education office can prepare an organic meal for under 3,000 won (2.69 U.S. dollars) despite subsidies from the city government. In addition, more effort is needed to prepare a meal low in salt and sugar without using artificial flavor enhancers. How schools can prepare massive meals to thousands of students with a limited budget also remains uncertain.

Parents at the event questioned whether the meal could be offered as a free school lunch. If food prices skyrocket, the education office’s pledge will ring hollow. Another problem is the next proposed step of the Seoul superintendent, who has pursued free school lunches since his inauguration in July last year. And how are free meals raising the level of education in Seoul, a task which is more important than feeding students? The impression at the school meal sampling event was that it was just for show.

Editorial Writer Hong Chan-sik (chansik@donga.com)