I must be the most authoritarian person in the world. At the school where I work I was part of overruling a vote by the junior student council (aged 6-9) to serve sushi as a school lunch simply because it was:
- Expensive (Requires unique ingredients that are not offered in bulk by any of the contractors delivering to the school)
- Impossible (Requires an impossible amount of work from each kitchen staff member for a single serving for each student)
- Poisonous (The fish we can get is decidedly not sushi grade and downright dangerous to eat raw)
- Illegal (Related to point 3, serving fish that is not thoroughly cooked would be an actual crime) and
- Insane (If you like sushi, can you imagine the disgusting mockery that would be a school lunch version made by three people for 800 students in 2 hours?)
Still, if a toothless but well meaning food waste campaign is the hallmark of authoritarianism, I was actually part of a small group of people with authority (in this case teachers) that straight up invalidated a democratic vote. I am authoritarian China, but even worse.
I’m gonna stand by my authoritarian communist Chinese decision because it helps with specifically the first 5 words of what you said.
Poisonous (The fish we can get is decidedly not sushi grade and downright dangerous to eat raw)
only some types of sushi is raw mostly it’s cooked fish the rest are all valid poits
In Japan the cooked variety is called 炙り寿司. While it’s pretty common, I’d still say that raw fish and shellfish is still much more common. As far as I know aburizushi in Japan is made from the same fish that the restaurant would serve raw and its a taste preference rather than a safety issue.
Does sushi even have all the required nutrients to be served as a lunch for children? I’m not against sushi at all, I just don’t really see it as a full lunch/meal…
Definitely not; we don’t eat it that often even in Japan. While yes we have fast food variants of sushi that are readily available; it’s overall more of a special dinner/occasion type food. I probably eat sushi once every couple months.
The only thing I could see being included in a lunch is something like inari-zushi, my office serves that as a side dish lunch a lot (which would get around the food safety concerns). We have chiraishi zushi at the office specifically on Girl’s Day, because it is a holiday thing.
An elementary school might have something similar on holidays, but generally the school menus are planned by a nutritionist on staff that does a pretty good job. It gets tricky for kids with special diets, which are often not well accomodated, and there is a weird obsession with milk despite the prevalance of lactose intoelrance.
EDIT: We have a massive food waste problem too, so we are no better in that regard, but at least our school lunches are pretty good.
