A couple of years ago it was decided to change the school menu for a healthier option. “Then the door was opened to a more vegetable-based one and all this led to what we ended up calling yogurtgate”. A woman, mother of two school-aged daughters who prefers not to give her name – no one wants to make enemies at the AFA – explains in this way what has happened at her daughters’ school, located in the Maresme, which defines as “a public school that works by projects, with an alternative model and with a lot of involvement from the families”.
When the center made that supplier change, they increased vegetarian options on the menu, a general trend in almost all schools, and replaced sweetened yogurt with plain yogurt. “There have been months of exhausting discussion, in AFA meetings and WhatsApp groups. We looked at all the options: yogurt with honey, brown sugar… Finally it was decided that sugar would be given to children if their parents allowed it, but this is surreal. There was a trade in sugar packets between the children under the table.” The issue, he jokes, “has divided families more than the process”.
In schools where the incidence of dining grants is higher, which would indicate a lower level of income among families, the complaints do not usually come so much because animal protein is consumed, but because of the opposite: because there is already that meat to cover the quota.
“We received some complaints from families because the children said they didn’t like how the food was cooked and, because it took longer, they ate it cold. What we have done is invite those families to taste the menu”, explains Patricia MartÃnez, mother of the Jacint Verdaguer school, in Poble Sec, where 40% of the students receive the dining grant.
“From the AFA we have insisted that the processed and canned ones be removed. Considering the problems we have in the neighborhood and the students from working families, what worries us is also keeping the price in the low range. Now we are at 6.30 euros a day for those who stay forever and 7.40 euros a day in isolation”, explains MartÃnez.
This year, the Generalitat set a maximum price of 6.91 euros per day and child (which remains fixed) in those centers where the lunch period lasts two and a half hours and up to 7.10 euros for sporadic menu, a very high price compared to other autonomous communities, where the price per day is around three or four euros, and much higher than in other surrounding countries. For example, in France, it varies by zone, but it does not usually exceed one and a half euros.
At the Els Encants school in Barcelona, ​​a public center similar to the Maresme, whose building was already built thinking about a specific educational project, of respectful education, related to the ideas of the School 21 group, several parents and mothers organized themselves to create Vatua l’Olla, an ad hoc dining service for the centre, but which they later exported to other centers such as Anglesola under the name of La Xup Xup. The main difference with other concessionaires is that they buy the products directly from their own certified organic agriculture suppliers, and they already plan the harvests based on that order. “We don’t buy processed products. Neither tofu nor seitan, we make everything in the kitchen”, explains the service coordinator, Laura Fernández. Children eat white meat and eggs once a week and red meat every fortnight. “We are a very carnivorous society, children would certainly prefer a meat lasagne to a chickpea lasagne. But there are dishes that have great acceptance, such as falafelâ€.
AFFac, the associations of federated families in schools, are concerned about the lack of “equivalence”, an issue that this system causes even within the public network, since families who can spend more time worrying about because of the food, they end up having much better school canteens than the rest.
Lidón Gasull, president of aFFac, finds the example of Els Encants interesting, but difficult to extrapolate. “But it can be taken as an example. If a school manages to do this, talk directly with its suppliers, imagine everything the Administration could do, if it wanted toâ€.
