``School Food? It Makes Me Lose My Appetite``

September 6, 12:20 PM, K Junior High School for Girls in Seoul. When the bell rings, the students flock to the cafeteria. The school offers lunch to 95 percent of the student body. Today`s menu included rice, potato soup, squid cakes, marinated cucumbers, and cabbage kimchi. A few grapes make up the desert.

The students respond that the potato soup is pretty salty and the squid cakes made with fried candied squid are sweet. With their Westernized tastes, the students do not even look at the marinated cucumbers.

Third year student Ms. Cho (age 15) says, ``The food definitely is poorer in quality than food at home, but I put up with it because my mother feels burdened by having to pack lunches.`` Second year Ms. Kim (age 14) also says, ``A lot of my friends bring bag lunches because they say, `I can`t stand school food`.``

Around the same time, S Junior High School in Seoul is serving lunch to the student body. First year, room 1 – the school does not have a cafeteria so it serves food in the classrooms. White rice, kimchi pancakes, beef soup, radish kimchi, marinated dried fish make up the menu and 100 won yogurts are served for desert. The students comment that the hard-boiled rice and glossy beef soup are okay but the side dishes are weak.

Even so, students with good appetites empty their plates in less than 10 minutes. Yet a large number of students complain, ``Usually they don`t make many meat dishes. When they offer sausages, it is usually only 3 or 4 per person, which is not enough.`` School lunches cost 2200 won per person.

The food at K Girls Junior High and S Junior High is actually quite good compared to other schools. At B Girls Junior High School, with a student body over 1500, cases of rice and side dishes are delivered to the school classrooms and hallways for lunch. When lunchtime comes, the soup has gotten cold and the side dishes are dry. Here, you cannot expect the signature `steamy and warm` meal that schools provide.

Second year Ms. Oh (age 14) at the school says, ``The curry sauce is so watery that it looks like `grass porridge` and the fish has been so badly prepared that you can hardly eat it for the smell.`` Ms. Oh finally gave up and started packing lunches to school.

The taste is an issue, but the greater point of controversy is cleanliness and sanitation. For example, there are many writings on the internet in the category of `Cafeteria Food Horrors`.

``Really, I am speechless about what happened two days ago (September 3). How in the world do three bugs get into a soup . . . `` (ID Kun Myung-In)

``There was a fly in the soup. Instead of apologizing and giving me a new one, they insisted that it could not have happened. There was even a spider last time.`` (ID S High School student)

``I am s student at K High School. I found a piece of vinyl in my soup. At a time when there`s all this talk about environmental hormones and all . . . `` (ID Yoo Ho-Yeon)

On the other hand, there are cases of cleanliness bordering on the extreme. A parent of one student who attends D grade school in Seoul, Mrs. Kim (age 45) says, ``My son complains, `They do more than wash because I can smell the disinfectants in the food`.``

``I attend the school board meetings but I feel awkward listing the problems one by one in front of the teachers. So I just stop at listening to the explanations on the food situation.`` added Mrs. Kim.

One school teacher remarked, ``Some schools use caterers whose decision makers are related through family, region, or schools, or some procure services from companies that offer rebates for lower quality products.``

Many junior high and high school headmasters in Seoul say, ``We are having a hard enough time keeping up the current quality of the food by charging 2000 to 2500 won which burden the students. The government should provide support not only for grade schools, but junior high and high schools for food preparations and operating cafeterias.``

Chung Kyung-Joon news91@donga.com