School lunches in the world

I’ve been teaching English at a public elementary school for 3 years now. They learn English through basic conversations in several situations that may happen in their daily life.
This month, they learn how to order foods in a restaurant by saying “What would you like?” ”I’d like ….”.
Before introducing the phrases, they learn what are like other countries’ cuisine?

For my preparation, I focused on “school lunches in the world”. It took me a lot of time to search and choose them. But it was worthy time for me to get to know the several situations of several countries.

First of all, I searched the photos of American school lunches. There are a lot of lunches seemingly oily and high-calorie without vegetables. The more I read the articles about American school lunches the more I felt how Japanese children are happy eating lunches under solid nutrition management. But I learned that American school lunch is now changing under the new rules reducing pre-cooked frozen foods, like pizza and French fries and adding more vegetables and fruits. I think this move is really great. I thought I want to introduce the differences. And another differences between Japan and U.S I want to show is where the students eat in and how the meals be served. You may not know that Japanese students eat lunch in their classroom and serve it by themselves, some students who are in charge wearing white gowns go get the lunch buckets and trays to the school kitchen and serve the classmates including the teacher, and start eating all together by greetings “Itadaki-masu”, or “Let’s eat!”. There is no cafeteria and no one serve meals for students.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/cafeteria-boot-camp-saves-school-lunch-15436161?tab=9482930&section=1206872&playlist=1887643



Other countries I searched were India, France, Korea.

Korean school lunch looks like has so much similarity to Japanese except Kimchi and silver tableware.

According to a video I watched, French school lunch is under more strict and thoughtful nutrition management.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6902333n

As to Indian school lunch, I was ashamed that I didn’t know the narrow circumstances for children in the country. I thought I have to tell this to my students.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2029625,00.html

After I showed and explained what I prepared to the students, they seemed they got shocked about it in some ways.
Some were surprised that there are soft drink vending machines and cafeteria at schools in the U.S. and said “I envy them.”
Some lost for words about the Indian situation.
Some were astonished at the plenitude of vegetable in France.

Their homeroom teachers said to me that that kind of things about other countries is rarely taught, so it was worthy time for them.

Although it took awful lot of time to prepare, I re-realized that not only teaching English but letting them look toward world are my responsibility.