Food for Thought: What the United States Can Learn from Japan’s School Lunch System
Gabe Baskin (Nara, 2021-2022)
Lunch has always been my most challenging subject in school. My high school served free and reduced lunches in one cafeteria while the business club served à la carte options in a second cafeteria. Despite living in a post-Brown vs. Board of Education world, there was still segregation at the lunch counter in my school.
While studying the National School Lunch Program during my thesis research at Emory University, I was astonished to learn that over one-third of public school students eligible for free meals chose not to enroll, in part because eligible students feel stigmatized by their peers for participating. I entered the working world dismayed by our school lunch system. I had ideas for ways to improve our lunch system, but the ideas felt more fairytale than feasible. At least, until I moved to Japan.
I moved to Oji in Nara, Japan as an ALT through the JET Program. I was instructing elementary and middle school classes at a combined elementary and high school with roughly one thousand students. One day between classes, Toshi Akagi, the affable caretaker at my school, asked me to help with the distribution and administration of the school’s lunch. This extra duty exposed me to Japan’s fascinating school lunch program and showed me what we can aspire toward in the United States.
School Lunch Programs in Japan and the United States
Established in 1946, the National School Lunch Program serves over thirty-one million children across over one hundred thousand schools (95 percent of all public schools) in the United States every day.(1) Japan’s school lunch program, launched in 1954, serves over ten million elementary and junior high school students in 32,400 schools (94.3 percent of all schools) across the country.(2) In the past two decades, both programs have been the focus of legislation—in Japan the Shokuiku Basic Act of 2005 and in the United States the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010—aimed at improving the programs, particularly the nutrition and health outcomes.
All Japanese public school students are required to participate in Japan’s school lunch program, and thanks to government subsidies, they pay only roughly $1.70 per day (¥250).(3) In the United States, the National School Lunch Program cost to students varies based on their family’s income, with students from families earning a combined $27,000 or less annually qualifying for free lunch, students from families earning a combined $39,000 or less annually qualifying for reduced-price lunches of $0.40 per meal, and students from families earning $39,000 or more paying full-price meals with prices determined by each school.(4) Unlike in Japan, students do not have to participate in the program and can elect to bring their own lunch or get lunch from off-campus, vending machines, or other sources.
The Japanese and American programs’ different structural components lead to vastly different outcomes in four areas: education, nutrition and health, food waste, and fostering community.
Comparing Approaches to Food Education
The Shokuiku Basic Act of 2005 in Japan placed a renewed focus on shokuiku, the all-encompassing term for food education. Shokuiku includes food and nutrition education, respect for food labor and agriculture, and traditional and regional food culture.(5) In Japan, the Shokuiku School Lunch Act requires school dieticians to work with other school teachers and help integrate Shokuiku across the curriculum.(6) The daily school lunch is the central component of Shokuiku, exposing children to nutritional best practices and different types of cuisine. At my school, Shokuiku involved learning about nutrition, participating in cooking classes, and traveling to a nearby farm to harvest sweet potatoes to learn about farming and Japan’s food systems.
In the United States, students receive on average less than eight hours of nutritional education each school year. The percentage of schools providing nutrition education has decreased from 85 percent to 74 percent from 2000 to 2014.(7) When food classes are taught, topics covered most thoroughly include dietary guidelines and goals, diet and health, and how to choose healthy foods.(8)
Nutritional and Health Impact of School Lunch Programs
Overseen by nutritionists and made fresh daily, Japanese school lunches have roughly 600 to 700 calories and include carbohydrates, meat or fish, and vegetables.(9) Research found that nutrient and vitamin intake for Japanese school children was higher during school days than non-school days—supportive evidence of the nutritional quality of Japan’s school lunch program.(10) Additional research found that the school lunch program helped close the nutritional gap between high and low-income students. It is also noteworthy that nationally in 2022, 76.6 percent of Japanese school lunch expenditures paid for local food ingredients, supporting local farmers and reducing the carbon footprint.(11)
In the United States, school lunches range from 550 to 850 calories. To receive government subsidies, school lunches must comply with federal targets in terms of fruits, vegetables, grain, meat, milk, and sodium.(12) Notably, the USDA will begin regulating sugars in school lunches for the first time beginning in 2025.(13) Schools have significant autonomy in meal planning so long as they meet the nutritional thresholds, so meal quality, freshness, and variety vary on a per-school basis.
In a comparison of U.S. and Japanese school lunches, one study found that among its sample of schools, vegetables constituted 15 percent of the total foods served in the United States but 51 percent of the total foods served in Japan.(14) Furthermore, U.S. school lunches offered on average 5.3 different foods per day while Japanese schools offered 10.5 different foods per day. Having eaten school lunches every day while working in a Japanese school system as an ALT, I found the meals to be delicious and well-balanced.
Every meal involved a key carbohydrate (either rice or bread), a protein source (often fish), a side (typically a salad or pickled vegetable), and soup. I was impressed not only with the taste and variety within every meal, but how the meals varied week by week and only repeated once or twice every month.
Food Waste in Japan and the United States
Food waste is a critical factor in discussions of the environment—researchers believe food waste constitutes 8 to 10 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, twice the rate of the entire aviation industry—and topics such as food insecurity and hunger.(15) In the United States, the National School Lunch Program wastes 30 percent of produced food, compared to just 7 percent in Japan.(16)
Research has identified a variety of reasons why Japan’s school lunch program wastes so much less than those in the United States. First, Japan has strong norms against wasting anything that can be useful, as captured by the term mottainai, and this sentiment extends to food. Next, school dieticians are required to report daily waste to their principals. As a result, some school dieticians implement different incentives, such as stickers in classrooms, to encourage a reduction in food waste. Teachers also discuss food waste and its impact as part of the Shokuiku curriculum. Lastly, students can control their portion size and redistribute unwanted food to their peers.(17) At my school, I witnessed food waste reduction through the teachers sharing one rice box. Teachers could scoop out excess rice they did not want to eat into the box, and hungrier teachers could come top off their bowl with additional rice.
Moreover, many schools in Japan consciously attempt to expose students to a wide variety of foods to help students gain comfort over disliked and unfamiliar foods.(18) Though serving these meals produced more food waste than more popular meals, some school dieticians believe this will reduce food waste at home and in the long term.(19)
Fostering Community Through School Lunch Programs
School lunch programs in Japan are designed to foster a sense of community. In addition to students all eating the same meal every day, students rotate as the lunch leader, known as toban. The toban helps set up the serving line, serve meals, and clean up the meals.(20) After the meal concludes, the students work together to clean the classroom and hallways.
In contrast to Japan, students in the United States eat different foods for school lunch, whether that is the National School Lunch Program meal, vending machine food, packed lunch, off-campus options, or skipping lunch altogether. In 2022, over 95 percent of National School Lunch participants were free or reduced lunch recipients, meaning students who could afford an alternative lunch overwhelmingly chose to eat something else.(21) Stigma is also a major unintended consequence of the U.S. approach. Research and student interviews found that students can feel stigmatized for eating free and reduced-price lunches since their wealthier peers often elect to eat other food options.(22)
Lessons from Japan’s School Lunch Program
While the United States may struggle to implement many components of Japan’s school lunch system, there are three incremental steps inspired by the Japanese system we can implement to improve our program.
Expanding Food Education
The United States can learn from Japan to be more ambitious in our health classes. Most health curriculums cover food only from a nutrition lens, creating a significant education gap. Today, farm and ranch families comprise less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.(23) Why not visit a farm as a class to gain a more robust understanding of the food that fuels our nation?
Eventually, the United States would benefit from integrating food education into subjects beyond health, mirroring Japan’s approach. For now, the first step is incremental change.
Reducing Food Emissions While Improving Meals
The United States should aspire to serve healthy, local, low-carbon school lunches like Japan. While this goal may sound ambitious, simple policy solutions can help facilitate this change. In more than twenty-five states, the government-funded “Double Up” program provides a funding match to those with food stamps for each dollar they spend on local produce at farmers’ markets and grocery stores. The federal government could extend this benefit to schools, helping incentivize more produce in meals and more locally sourced food, all while reducing transport-related carbon emissions.
Improving Community and Reducing Stigma
Like Japan, the United States should use school lunch to foster community, not perpetuate stigma. Improving the quality of the National School Lunch Program will help, making the meals more enticing for all students. So too will limiting vending machines and other competitive foods on campus that delineate rich students from poor students. In the long term, implementing universal free school lunch nationwide could help reduce stigma. Many countries worldwide implement free lunch programs for all students, including India, Brazil, and Sweden. (24) During the pandemic, the United States implemented a similar policy, and though universal lunch has ended nationally, many cities and states—including Vermont, California, and Colorado—have retained similar policies. (25)
Lunch should be a difficult subject. Crafting inclusive, sustainable, and healthy school lunch policies is not easy. For all its strengths, Japan faces challenges it must address within its own lunch system. Some teachers, for example, criticize requiring students to help clean, taking away from classroom education time. Japan could learn from the United States’s free lunch offerings, a practice some municipalities in Japan are beginning to implement. (26) If, however, U.S. educators want to make the next generation of American youth healthier, more equitable, more knowledgeable, and more community-centered, they can draw a great deal of inspiration from Japan’s school lunch system.
About the Author
Gabe Baskin is a Masters of Public Policy student at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan concentrating in international economic development. He has worked internationally in Guatemala, Ireland, the Virgin Islands, and Japan on topics ranging from transitional justice to Irish parliament. Gabe also previously worked at the Woodruff Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia, helping distribute $500M in grant funds annually to non-profits in the southeast. Gabe served as an ALT in Oji-cho, Nara-ken from 2021-2022, and hopes to return to Japan after graduating.
References
(1)Betty T. Izumi, Andrea Bersamin, Carmen Byker Shanks, Gitta Grether-Sweeney, and Mary Murimi, “The US National School Lunch Program: A Brief Overview,” The Japanese Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics 76 (2018): S126–S132, https://doi.org/10.5264/eiyogakuzashi.76.s126/.
(2) Nobuko Tanaka and Miki Miyoshi, “School Lunch Program for Health Promotion Among Children in Japan,” Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 21, no.1 (2012): 155–158, https://doi.org/10.6133/apjcn.2012.21.1.22/.
(3) Deirdre Appel, “Japan’s School Lunch Program Serves Nutritious Meals,” NYC Food Policy Center (Hunter College), March 11, 2021, https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/food-policy-snapshot-japans-school-lunch-program/.
(4) “The National School Lunch Program,” Food Research & Action Network, accessed October 2022, https://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/National-School-Lunch-Program_R2C.pdf/.
(5) Betty T. Izumi, Rie Akamatsu, Carmen Byker Shanks, and Kahori Fujisaki, “An Ethnographic Study Exploring Factors That Minimize Lunch Waste in Tokyo Elementary Schools,” Public Health Nutrition 23, no. 6 (2020): 1142–51. https://doi.org/10.1017/s136898001900380x/.
(6) Izumi et al., “An Ethnographic Study.”
(7) “Healthy Eating Learning Opportunities and Nutrition Education,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 10, 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/nutrition/school_nutrition_education.htm.
(8) “Nutrition Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools,” National Center for Education Statistics, accessed October 28, 2023, https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/frss/publications/96852/index.asp?sectionid=3.
(9) Appel, “Japan’s School Lunch Program.”
(10) Keiko Asakura and Satoshi Sasaki, “School Lunches in Japan: Their Contribution to Healthier Nutrient Intake among Elementary-School and Junior High-School Children,” Public Health Nutrition 20, no. 9 (2017): 1523–33, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980017000374/.
(11) Asakura and Sasaki, “School Lunches in Japan.”
(12) “Securing Stable Food Supplies,” Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, accessed November 26, 2023, https://www.maff.go.jp/e/data/publish/attach/pdf/index-226.pdf/.
(13) Joanne Vo, “Nutrition and Health Info Sheet for Health Professionals – National School Lunch Program,” UC Davis Nutrition Department, December 5, 2020, https://nutrition.ucdavis.edu/outreach/nutr-health-info-sheets/pro-school-lunch-program.
(14) Jeff Gelski, “USDA to Regulate Added Sugars in School Meals,” Food Business News, February 6, 2023, https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/23166-usda-to-regulate-added-sugars-in-school-meals/.
(15) M. C. Schmidt, S. L. Christiansen, S. J. Fausett, D. Acker, and N. Gose, “A Comparison of Elementary School Lunch between the United States and Japan,” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 113, no. 9 (September 2013), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2013.06.322/.
(16) Somini Sengupta, “Inside the Global Effort to Keep Perfectly Good Food out of the Dump,” The New York Times, October 13, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/climate/global-food-waste-solutions.html/.
(17) Izumi et al., “An Ethnographic Study.”
(18) Izumi et al., “An Ethnographic Study.”
(19) Izumi et al., “An Ethnographic Study.”
(20) Izumi et al., “An Ethnographic Study.”
(21) “Child Nutrition Tables,” Food and Nutrition Service U.S. Department of Agriculture, accessed October 28, 2023, https://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/child-nutrition-tables/.
(22) Amy L. Best, Fast Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines, and Social Ties (New York, N.Y: New York University Press, 2017). See also Janet Poppendieck, Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).
(23) “Fast Facts about Agriculture and Food,” American Farm Bureau Federation, accessed December 14, 2023, https://www.fb.org/newsroom/fast-facts/.
(24) Cecily Spelling, “Which Countries Are Already Serving Up School Food for All?” Sustain, March 9, 2023, https://www.sustainweb.org/blogs/mar23-countries-have-universal-free-school-meals/.
(25) Spelling, “Which Countries.”
(26) Anika Osaki Exum, “Why a Movement for Free School Lunches Is Spreading across Japan,” The Japan Times, September 4, 2023. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/09/03/japan/society/free-school-lunche
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