This week’s TV news reported that an alarming 16.1 % of children cannot afford to pay up for their kyushoku fees.

Below are two articles reporting on the kyushoku school lunch.


Where’s the milk? School lunches no longer sacred cows (Japan Times, January 26th, 2015)

by Philip Brasor & Masako Tsubuku





The experiment happened to coincide with the consumption tax hike that went into effect last April, and the mayor conceded that one reason for cutting milk was to “prevent further increases in the cost of school lunches.” At the time, parents were paying ¥250 for elementary school children’s lunches and ¥300 for junior high school. The carton of milk that came with every meal cost the city ¥50.

Naturally, the Hokuriku Dairy Association protested strongly against Sanjo’s decision. Last year, Niigata dairy farmers produced 53,600 tons of milk, 14 percent of which was used in school lunches. The association challenged the opinion that milk doesn’t go with Japanese food, as did nutritionists, who pointed out that the absence of milk on a daily basis could have a negative effect on a child’s development, since a carton contains 200 of the minimum 300-400 grams of calcium required.

Even the education ministry found the experiment strange, saying it had “never heard of a school giving up milk for lunches.” Sanjo countered that the calcium could be made up easily by, for instance, fortifying soup with fish stock. In any event, the city received 61 messages from residents, with 43 supporting the experiment.

As the dairy association’s reaction shows, school lunches are an important source of revenue for local producers, and often local governments tweak menus to help farmers. Six years ago, Sanjo stopped serving bread and noodles in its school lunches and replaced these staples with rice full time in order to promote the area’s rice farmers.

The city of Kyoto recently did something similar, increasing the use of rice in its bid to promote “Japanese food culture” in line with UNESCO’s plan to register washoku as a cultural heritage item. Previously, Kyoto schools served rice four days a week and on the remaining day bread or noodles, but they decided to do rice all the time. Bolstering Sanjo’s claim about milk, Kyoto by the same token wants to promote green tea as the standard lunch beverage.

As Asahi Shimbun pointed out, school lunches have always had a political dimension. After the war, food was scarce, and U.S. relief agencies and UNICEF provided Japanese public schools with powdered milk and wheat. Some people believe it had less to do with charity than with getting Japanese children hooked on bread, so that U.S. farmers could sell more wheat to Japan.

In any event, Japanese of a certain age remember vividly the white bread loaves (koppe-pan) and cups of lumpy, yellowish milk they consumed every day until the mid-60s, when fresh milk was finally introduced. White rice didn’t become common in school lunches until around 1975. Similarly, the Japanese whaling industry had a kind of captive market for its wares.

Since then, Japanese school lunches have become the envy of the world and are considered instrumental in putting children on a path to avoid the obesity that plagues so many industrialized countries where school lunches are optional and discretionary.

Nevertheless, cost is a concern. According to the education ministry, average monthly fees for school lunches in 2013 ranged from ¥3,691 for the first three years of elementary school to ¥4,628 for junior high school. The ministry also found that labor, maintenance and other costs borne by local governments tend to be more than twice the cost of ingredients. The average cost of a meal is now between ¥880 and ¥920, which means the local government has to pay the difference when the ¥250-¥300 fee paid by parents is subtracted.

As Sankei Shimbun once pointed out, the cost of providing one meal to a child is higher than it is for the average salaryman, which in 2007 was ¥650. But maybe that isn’t so strange when you consider the general feeling that school lunches are held in such high esteem. Some local governments even serve school lunches to the general public in restaurants. They are very popular, and not just for nostalgic reasons. Read the entire article here.

Food education the law in Japan | School lunches part of education
By Danielle Nerman, CBC News Posted: Jan 12, 2015

Masako Otsubo lectures on Shoku-iku during lunch at Harumichi Elementary School in Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture. (Danielle Nerman/CBC


In 2014, the Japanese government spent more than 200 million yen on “Shoku-iku.” Translated, Shoku-iku means “eating education.” Dr. Yukio Hattori coined the term more than a decade ago and calls it a blueprint for conscious eating.

“Many young people don’t eat well, their diets are bad. So we had to rectify this. And so that is why we started this movement,” says Hattori.

Shoku-iku is taught in every Japanese public school, starting in kindergarten. Students learn to:

Never skip breakfast.
Avoid buying food from convenience stores.
Choose a traditional Japanese meal over fast food.
“We need people to become healthy through eating because currently, our medical fee is 40 trillion yen per year. Increasing one trillion yen per year,” says Hattori.

Hattori helped the Japanese government develop and implement the “Basic Law of Shoku-iku” in 2004. Since the law was brought in, the number of diet and nutrition teachers in Japan’s public schools has gone from 34 to more than 4,000.

AUDIO | Food education law in Japan
What’s the secret to Japan’s slender population? Serious ‘eating education’
Masako Otsubo is one of them, delivering food education at three schools in Yamatokoriyama City, in Nara Prefecture.

“More and more people are suffering from lifestyle-related diseases, and that is not only among adults but also children. I think more people in Japan are recognizing the importance of teaching children about good food and good eating so they can become healthy grown-ups,” says Otsubo.

After I interviewed Otsubo, she gave a Shoku-iku lecture to Grade 6 students at Harumichi Elementary, while they ate lunch. The meal was made from scratch and consisted of steamed rice, Japanese curry with vegetables and a green bean and lotus root salad.

Otsubo designed the healthy menu. “School lunches are part of education,” says Otsubo.

School lunch program

At Sanya Elementary in the Tokyo suburb of Suginami, I watched a group of Grade 2 students haul heavy trays of service dishes and pots of hot food into their classroom. Wearing matching white chef’s hats and sanitary masks, they quickly and confidently ladle steaming miso into bowls for their teachers and classmates. There is no room here for picky eaters. Everyone gets the same lunch and eats together, at their desks.

About 99 per cent of elementary schools and 85 per cent of middle schools in Japan’s public school system have a hot lunch program. It costs about $4.00 per meal and each one rarely hovers over 700 calories.

“To be obese in Japan would be very difficult because you’d be scrutinized. [There’s] huge social pressure to be similar. There’s a saying here that goes, ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered down,'” says Jason Wik, who grew up in Cranbrook, B.C.

He’s been living in Tokyo for nearly two decades. Wik married a Japanese woman and has two daughters, 9 and 13 years old. During dinner at the Wik household, I watched the girls fill their plates with their favourite foods — raw fish and edamame. Both girls are enrolled in the Japanese public school system. Their dad gives Shoku-iku some credit for their healthy eating habits.

“Certainly, aggressive steps to educate kids about what eating properly is and how to grow their own food would be a good start. But I don’t think it’s just up to the individual consumer. The industries and corporations that are responsible for a lot of food in the stores need to change,” says Wik.

That’s already happening. Employees from Kikkoman regularly visit schools and give lectures on soy products. And Tanita Corporation, a Japanese company that manufactures weight scales, has opened a chain of restaurants that offer “500 calorie meals.” The eateries also offer diners a free full-body composition test.

Danielle Nerman travelled to Japan under the 2014 Foreign Press Centre Japan (FPCJ) media fellowship. The program is designed to enable Canadian journalists to broadcast and write articles that will give people outside of Japan an opportunity to learn about the country.


By Chico Harlan January 26, 2013 Washington Post













Restaurant-worthy meals








“People in charge, please come up.”


“Is this okay?” the girl asks as the first student comes by.

When everybody sits back down, the lecture begins.


One child interrupted.

“You have to eat a balanced meal.”


Eating as education






Yuki Oda contributed to this report.