Kaohsiung City has implemented free nutritious lunches for elementary and middle schools since the 115th school year, and the deputy mayor inspected to ensure quality

Kaohsiung City has provided free nutritious lunches to elementary and middle schools since the 2015 school year to take care of the health of students and reduce the burden on parents. In order to ensure that "quality is not compromised," Vice Mayor Li Huairen went to Dingjin Elementary School in Sanmin District today (8th) to inspect the school lunch supply. Li Huairen pointed out that free nutritious lunches not only exempt students from meal fees, but more importantly, insist on "quality is not compromised."

Dingjin Elementary School has a public central kitchen that serves about 1,500 people every day to elementary school and kindergarten students on the school as well as the nearby Hedi Elementary School.

Accompanied by Director of Education Wu Lisen, Li Huairen went to Dingjin Elementary School in Sanmin District to inspect the lunch supply situation. He pointed out that free nutritious lunches not only exempt students from meal fees, but more importantly, insist on "no compromise on quality" through professional nutrition control and supply of high-quality ingredients. At the same time, they also integrate the concepts of food conservation and food waste reduction into school life, and implement the moral education of "free does not mean waste".

The overall satisfaction rate for Dingjin Elementary School’s annual lunch is 90%. Today’s lunch includes millet, cola roasted pork, scrambled eggs with carrots, mung bean sprouts and leeks, melon and chicken soup, and local bananas. The budget for each meal is 66 yuan, and professional nutritionists check the meal design and ingredient quality.

In terms of ingredient selection, in principle, school lunch fruits use local products from Kaohsiung, and vegetables also give priority to local ingredients from Kaohsiung. However, taking into account the recent climate and agricultural product supply situation, the Education Bureau has recently forwarded an official document from the agricultural administration unit to flexibly adjust the use of domestically produced traceable agricultural products based on the actual supply situation to maintain a stable supply of school lunches.

The attached kindergarten also actively promotes "Farming and Reading Experience and Five Senses Education", revitalizing the abandoned campus land into an "edible landscape for small farmers". Through farming experiences such as sowing, weeding, catching insects, and harvesting, children learn about the process of food from the production site to the table. They also learn through five senses such as observation, touch, and smell, cultivating the concept of cherishing food and understanding of ingredients.

The Education Bureau emphasized that after the free lunch policy is launched, it will be based on the principle of ensuring student nutrition, food safety and stable supply, and will continue to understand the actual needs of schools and adjust the implementation method on a rolling basis so that the free lunch policy can make students eat healthily and happily, and parents can feel safe and secure.