Def not the same, I remember visiting my second cousin in Kemijärvi as a school lad. Me coming from Helsinki where school lunch in the early nineties was dodgy at best of times and my cousin enjoying reindeer stew and such up near Lapland. Very different depending on the size of the school. Then again my school had nearly 300 students while his had all of 35.
Not exactly. In middle and elementary schools the grading can be really different depending on the school and the teachers. Also teachers can be way more educated in some schools. Also the budget for school food is different in each city. What type of people go to that school also affects how it is to study in it. Yes, it should be the same but its not as simple
I went to a pretty small primary school and we had our own chef that prepared our food from scratch. We even had some days that we could suggest what food we wanted. And when i went to vocational school studying to be a electrician where we had chef's school also, the students prepared the food for the whole school😂
The food we had in school came from one big kitchen that sent out food to multiple schools, it sucked because the food always had to be reheated and it always ended up overcooked. I remember so many times the pasta was stuck in a big ball on the scoop.
Basically the same thing here too, but have to say that the students sometimes nailed the food but sometimes I just took salad. On the other side of the road, basically same school but included more under the same roof (elementary school and so on) had bought the meals from a company that also makes the food from scratch, well, is usually better. Of course there are some cases where it's the other way around but still.
where is went to primary school there was their own garden with berry bushes , apple trees, growing paches and fields to grow potatoes and other veggies. so we used our biology hours and other lessions to plant the seeds and then in autum harvest the veggies and berries.
There are definitely some cons to Finnish school lunches but overall I feel really lucky to have had them, even though I was occasionally a pretty picky eater. But just the fact that we can serve our selves and choose our portion sizes, had salad, bread, etc. is pretty cool, especially after I learned about school lunches in countries like the UK and US.
@@Mojova1 meillä kaikille kaupungin peruskouluille ruoka tuli yhdestä isosta keittiöstä, joka tarkoitti sitä, että kouluille saapunut ruoka piti uudelleen lämmittää, joka monesti teki ruoasta ylikypsää. Muistan niin monta kertaa kun pasta oli jäänyt kauhaan kiinni isona möykkyä.
Yes. Finnish school lunch is free for all students. If staff wants to eat same food, they pay. It isn't expensive. Current price is 6€ for whole lunch. You can also buy leftover food for very cheap. Last time I buy food for me and my husbend, the whole meal for us both cost only 2,6€.
Huh. We pay around ~4,50€ per meal, and the supervising teachers for tax value (=less, I think it might actually be free? to them). That is for all levels, so daycare, primary and lukio (+ over here also the employees of town hall, who eat what the same food cooked at the school kitchen). I grew up here, and 9/10 foods are and were delicious, even that 1/10 was edible. Our school's cooks are really great and we are so lucky we have them ❤
I started school in - 79 in a tiny school with around 50 pupils. We had our own cook and all the food was prepared at our school kitchen. The food was fantastic! Always fresh salads and bread. Sometimes we had competitions as to how many blood pancakes or spinach pancakes we could eat... 😂 On top of the lunch, we had a small snack every afternoon. It could be a piece of cheese with crackers or fruit or yogurt or fruit juice. I really loved the food at school.
I have gratefully eaten whatever they served, but some "cool kids" didn't, they went to a close by supermarket and bought what they preferred instead of vegetarian lunch (once per week), fish (also once per week), or a freezers delight (made from whatever were left over from previous days). This was in junior-high by the way, in elementary school and high school everybody ate together. It was a nice social interaction in the middle of the day, where you can talk about your hobbies, recent episode of your favourite tv-show, or whatever was talk of the town that day. The social iteraction was very important, I could argue that it is even more important than the quality of the lunch itself.
Lunches at my universities were around 2€, schools before that (trade school, elementary, secondary high school) provided students with meals daily. And even in universities the price was reduced, since the goverment covers around half of the cost. So a fair deal since you can choose pretty freely what you want.
most people say that school food sucks, but the older you get the less people say so. mostly the bad food stigma, in my opinion, comes from the lack of seasoning as the food has to be appropriate for so many people. in younger ages the lack of seasonings you can add is minimal. but the older you get like secondary high and up, they expect you to not abuse the usage of salt etc. so you get more options. our middle school got rid or all seasonings because some lil shits (kevin = jonne) did pranks to each other and just dumped pepper on others food. >:( in our vocational/trade school we have also a breakfast. different porridge and toppings depending on weekday. and a coffee break. as a kid you don't really understand how much of a good thing the free food is and you take it for granted, but as you get older you understand the weight it has on learning and over all well being and equality.
i personally never ever have understanded how the food sucks? i ate it all and almost everytime i took more food as long as i had time to eat because i liked the food :D and yes, i never left anything on the plate. meanwhile i see other dumping half of the plate into the bin
They should have shown the christmas spread. Ham, gravy, lingonberry jam, different root vegetable casseroles, potatoes, pickled herring, beet salad and mabye dessert.
I was born and brought up in Hungary, in fact, in the "socialist" years. I had freshly prepared two-course school lunches (soups and seconds), from age 6-18. It was free for everyone. Everything was seasonal, bread baked that morning, and everything was prepared in the school from scratch. There was no choice, but I didn't know any vegetarians etc anyway. Now I live in the UK and this is where I became a parent. I know exactly what you mean: processed, bad quality food reheated. There is often a salad bar, and a choice of three (meat / fish / vegetarian), but still it is not healthy, at least in my experience. They also feel the need to serve a sugary dessert every day. I also lived in Finland and went to university there. We had to pay for lunches but had a reduction with the student cards. There was a "bath tub" full of fresh salad, and another with warm potatoes boiled with the skin on, you could have as much of those as you wanted with a paid meal. I don't think everything was made fresh, but I liked it.
I started my school 1963 at the age of 7 (actually 6 years 10 months). I had never problems with the school food, except when we had fish soup made of pike. Pike has lots of bones and I hated it. Otherwise the food was good.
A lot of things in Finland are pragmatic, not ideological. Like, if the question is "how will kids learn the most" then free school meals are a no-brainer, even when it doesn't suit everyone's ideology. Same with 45min classes, 15min breaks are that. Kids need fresh air and to move around, and to socialize on their own. It is very, very important to the way developing brains work. Again, there is a school of thought that sees that as "being too soft", they would rather see kids being in classes for 4 hours straight since that is more what worklife is like but.. who the fuck cares, we do what is best no matter if it is absolutely following some narrow ideology. You can see this in a lot things that seem weird to foreigners, there is a desired outcome and then steps you can take to get that outcome and it rarely fits into one single ideology. While Finland is a social democracy that is also not ideological choice but practical, it manages to produce certain outcomes that are desirable.
Only small war between ideological and pragmatical sides is the time when school day starts. Almost every expert and research hints to that way it would be beneficial to start hour later just based purely on biology and efficiency of learning and maybe less proplematic social behaviour. But it feels 8-16 days are so damn deep rooted, even othert parts of society have largely adopted flexible hours and even 24h businesses.
This def brought back memories from elementary. The municipal school lunch menu was determined weekly, and whenever we had steamed sausages and mashed potatoes, one of the cool teachers always wore a suit on the day to mark the occasion. It was always a special day... Some of my favorites aside from the perpetual salad bar were pea soup and pancakes on most Thursdays, rice and beef, and ham and potato casserole. And before the end of the year holidays we had a big celebratory meal with the entire school :' )
it was great thing for me when i was in school when we are talking about food since my mother was one of the cooks so most of the times i got what i had home so i would say i loved the food we where getting in school 😅
I am so suprised that you are so suprised about this. This is absolutely how schoollunches are provived to all children or teachers everyday. And the quality of foodand taste is Ok or good. And yes all fresh and free.
Greetings from Finland. I remember from 60´s when I started my school. We start school here as 7 years old. We did not have in that time bread or milk, but we all had cows and our mothers wars home-mothers, so all mothers baked own bread and "pulla". I like most "korvapuusti" "box on the ear") and sokeripossu" ("suckerpig"). We took milk and bread from home, but we got warm lunch at school. When I stated s.c. middle school, we did not take milk and bread with us. Our school have always had own kitchen, and food was really healthy and tasted good. We never need to pay for school lunch, note before we start to study in university. I ave seen TV-documents of James Oliver from USA and we were terrifying of what children eat in USA as o school lunch. That´s not food... junk food ... poison!!!.
It is true that food is healthy and good in Finnish schools. Also people drink water, milk or juice - but there is not any sugar soda drinks. Also meals in Finnish army are good and healthy.
When I started school in the late 80's we still had a dinner lady, only one food option, one mixed salad option, and milk came in single portion packages. The bread we had was mostly dry crisp bread, similar to Ryvita. During just my first six years in primary school we'd moved onto this self-serving model with some portion restrictions and rules, we had usually two salad options, occasionally fresh bread or a dessert, and milk came from a tap so we could have a re-fill if we chose to. Then again around a decade later I went back as a substitute teacher, and by then they'd added the vegetable option, freely available spices, and the selection of foods had become more international instead of serving only traditional Finnish dishes. But it's always been reasonably healthy, free of charge, and gotten rid of my hunger even on days I've not been a huge fan. The schools will occasionally serve less healthy options too, like fries, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, or pizza, but maybe once a month. Desserts might be served weekly, but certainly not daily, and mostly they're things like fresh fruit, freshly made oven pancake with jam, or some kind of a fool ("kiisseli" in Finnish), sometimes ice cream or pastry. You'll basically never see crisps or candy in a Finnish school cafeteria.
School meals are free except for higher education levels such as universities. In my university, the basic, good and healthy lunch cost 1.10 euros and it was like any standard buffet-style food. You also had the option to pay for 5 euros if you wanted a legit Restaurant grade meals, like Steak meal or burger with fries and they were cooked by actual trained chefs.
Sadly the quality of Finnish education and school lunches have taken some huge losses lately in the name of political grand standing and international corporate greed being allowed into the Finnish school systems (the most idiotic thing ever) Finland also has a huge self-interest in teaching children a versatile healthy diet and learn about food/food waste, since it translates directly to more informed and more fit citizens requiring less health care services than unfit/fat/obese population would. Not only that, they are more likely to have more energy and stamina for a bigger variety of jobs, which increases taxes and productivity 1:12 If you would separate the kids by whose parents are too poor to pay for their meals, it would be extremely harmful classism that goes against everything that Finland stands for and is trying to combat
School food was really good at my time, 80's and 90's. I lived in Lapland for some years and went to a smaller school with under 100 pupils. We had even sauteed reindeer as a school lunch. Totally restaurant class stuff that costs easily 30€ in a restaurant these days.
Actually many secondary collages in serves also free porridge for the students in the mornings. Many young students don't eat at home in the mornings and their energy levels are low. This helps them to concentrate on study's better. It also is believed this lowers the amount of food that is left over in dinner time as they are not so hungry that they pile plates full of food that they then can't eat fully.
It has been over 20 years from my school days, but I still remember all the good and the bad from them. The good was that the food was always plentiful. Only once when I was 8 years old food ran out and our principal was furious to our kitchen staff about it. The bad was that our schools own kitchen stopped making its own food and started to get the food from central kitchen somewhere and it was terrible! Too salty, potatoes were rubbery and they had big dark heart. But classes through 7-9 in a different building (and college in the same different building) we had our own kitchen with lovely staff. Of course at that age one rebels against healthy school lunches (but still I ate them) but in the college me and my friends totally respected our free and high quality food and the kitchen staff. When we arrived we said "good day" and when we finished and left we thanked for the meal. Also sometimes we chatted with them and remembered to praise their food, since it was really good. And we rolled our eyes to those juniors who went to eat candy or pastries in the mall next to us and skipped their school lunch. We also had some special days when there were tortillas or something like that. What a joyous occasions they were! So yeah, Finnish school lunches rock!
My son gets these free meals at his daycare, which is part of a school. Some of the nutritional requirements are questionable - for example, they use low-fat milk, which I don't think is good for growing children, and recently they have started serving processed vegan meat substitutes sometimes - but I'll take that over having to prepare 10 extra meals a week.
When I was in the primary school, we had our own staff, two awesome cooks who made the food for us. It was so tasty, and definitely made with love. We didn't have a cafeteria, so we ate at the class, but it didn't confuse since the break was always one hour, combined so that we had about 30 min for eating and the rest playing outdoors. The school was small, only about 30 pupils, during the last year we were 28 pupils total. Then they shut it down, and I moved to a bigger school with like 300-400 pupils, and the quality of the food went down quite a bit, but was still healthy and nutritious. Just like the food shown here.
Fresh bread? For short period of time, i was working in school kitchen and we baked fresh bread every single day. There used to be 1-2 persons in baking station, and we made fresh buns for 800-1000 people and did it by hand, no rolling machines. Only exception was days when we had something like salmon soup, it was served with rye bread which came ready sliced from bakery.
I started school about 35 years ago and I always enjoyed the school lunches. Even when I was a little picky eater when I was young, I always liked some part of the meal served and older I really appreciated the school lunch. And now when I have children the school lunch is big part of our familys weekly eatings because we dont have to think about kids lunches on school days.
Hi Mert! Long time follower, first time commenting, haha. I love your videos! :) But yeah, we don't have dinner laidies here in Finland. It annoys me that people are complaining about the finnish school food nowadays and that sucks. But regarding to what I have seen in the Internet, finnish school lunch is top notch compared to many other countries. And what have I read it is sadly the only warm meal of the day for some :/ My mother was a head chef in a larger school complex (many different schools would dine here) and she would fight for the students to have a fresh and quality lunch when the schools wanted to cut back on ingredients. I often had the same food at home so I knew what we would be having for dinner :D Before I went to the secondary school (where my mom was at) I would ask my mom after her work day "Hey mom! What did you have today?" - And I would have the same delicious meal! We also had our own chef at elementary school and we all loved her. After we ate we went in to thank her! Even the salad was so appealing in every school I went that you just had to take some. I wish I had been eating more salads back in the day :) When I continued my studies further we had this cafeteria where the students made the food and it was great!
Greetings from finland.😊 I remember back when I was in 7th grade I had this one boy in my class who refused to take anything from the salad bar dispite my teacher told him to do so multipal times EVERYDAY.😂 I'm a working 21 yr old woman now btw.
In my elementary school during my first few years we used to not have a "salad bar". It was just some mixed salad that was rarely any good, i mean i would eat it but not much of it. It was such a cool thing that me and my friends talked highly of when "the salad bar" became the norm, felt like it was more luxurious. Ever since every learning institution ive gone to has had a salad bar for every day lunches, and every time i started i felt positively surprised about it, though i do take it for granted now that ive had it for so long.
You find this food system also in sweden, norway and denmark, heallty for the future-kids. It forbidden to take to school candy, buns, chips, chocolate etc.. as lunch or snack. Some school serves even breakfast for lirtle cost, if parents font have time to give a properly heallty one...
in Sweden and Finland, not in Norway or Denmark... I have been working in Norway and I noticed that school children often eat in grocery stores that often even have microwave ovens....
Yes free for everybody. Those kids who don't get breakfast at home before school can also go to school for breakfast. And during the covid when the schools were closed kids had their foodbox they could use at home.
I'm Finnish (I'm 13 years old) School is free and so is the hot lunch. It's pretty good considering that it's free. But if you're under 16 you know how the food actually is...😂
When I was at school obviously I wanted to have that fast food stuff, but looking back. The food was very good and healthy. I have been in a small school where we ate at the class rooms, but also bigger schools where we ate the cafeteria. The only lunch lady we had was the one who brings more food for the "buffet" when it´s ending. It is free for every student, just like school in general is free for all of the children...no matter the race, gender, money etc. When I went to the university, that is where I had to start paying for my lunch...and it was just like 2-3 euros...so tiny amount.
Yes, this is totally true. It was when I was in school. Got different food from kitchen since I was ( and still I am ) vegetarian. Now my son is ten years old and we can check the menu in the internet. Always available for all vegetarian food or ” normal ” food. If they have some trip or go to skiing etc. Shool give them takeaway food or snacks.
I remember the delicious dishes our lunch lady made in the 90s. Everything changed after elementary school, because all the food came from the central kitchen. After 24 years, I still miss the woman who makes the best lasagna and mashed potatoes.
Yes the school lunches are good, basic food, free of charge. And I think they have gotten better and better with time. When I was in elementary school in the 90s, there were a lot of jokes about "rubber potatoes," as in boiled potatoes that had the texture and bounciness of rubber. But I've eaten at school cafeterias that I imagine serve similar food to elementary schools many times since then, and the food is varied, decently prepared and tastes great! Not fancy restaurant level of deliciousness, but hearty, decent fare.
Everything in public school is free. Food, books, teatching etc. You can have even pencils, sharpeners and erasers for free if you want them. Students need to buy just their own backpacks, pencil cases and the contact plastic to protect the books. But if you are from a poor family the government will give them money to buy these things, the money is just not much so they need to get the most cheap ones in the store. The food is okay, the quality has changed for worse over the years, because the amount of people has increased so the food needs to be cheaper. Finland is very popular for their using of potato, but the potatos on schools are from Poland and because they are not boiled but steamed the texture is like rubber. We called them rubber potatos because they would bounce on the table :D So usually the food is not made from scratch, it comes in vaccuum packages and they just heat it up and mayde add spices or cream. Usually the food was pretty good, but some foods were so bad and weird that no one was eating it even at home like herring casserole. This all is paid with tax money.
Everything in schools incuding school lunches are free of charge. All education is free up to university degrees. School lunches are planned so that they are healthy. Many schools slso offer breakfast or an afternoon snack.
Its just smart to let the pupils get their own food, it is taught that you eat what you take, so you can build up more with some and leave something you dont like out.. so it reduces the food waste
2:26 yeah that's not the bread we ate when i was a kid in finland. we ate something called "näkkileipä" it is like the cheapest bread you can buy here and i don't even know if you can call it bread :D
I still eat a lot of näkkileipä, here in the UK they sell at least Ryvita that's pretty close to the Finnish version. A couple of years ago they started selling hapankorppu here too, it's even called Finn crisp 😁 Nothing wrong with those, perfect reserve to keep in the cupboards for whenever I run out of bread otherwise. (Although I bake my own now so rarely run out, the quality of fresh bread sold in the British supermarkets is quite lacking compared to what I'm used to.)
In my opinion the schools serve dishes with very high carb percentage and too little good quality proteins. It's not as bad as super processed foods, but the carb mushes are not that great either... Of course its better than nothing, but that amount of fast carbs can be inflammatory and make students tired after meals. Most proteins could be quite a lot more expensive to integrate to the free meals though so I can partly understand why its so carb heavy.
ok here we go. I'm 46 now and i had good free meals when i was in school. We didn't know sushi or asian flavors. Just good basic food and everybody ate and makaroonilaatikko say was the best. I actually searched if there is makaroonilaatikko in other countries: no. I was surprised....not even Sweden- No. I still love it. Simple to make and you can add veggies or what ever you want to it. I usually put frozen veggies nowadays. I think every country has some food that they love and other ppl are just...hmmm :D
It's true, I have had some expeience with both swedish and finnish schools. And by and large, we follow the same model :) And it has been a great help both with life, but also in the social area. I still have friends since that time, and we still meet up and cook together if possible during visits :)
I check every week what my kids have a lunch at school... but also what kids don,t eat.. rest food goes for church whos give it for poor people.. so it wont end up for trash =) greetings from Fin =)
I used to dislike the school lunches here mainly because I lived in a pretty small city and the food that they used to serve was mostly traditional finnish food which I am not a big fan of. Then I moved out to study in the captial region and the food quality skyrocketed, I have heard some horror stories from other schools in helsinki and their food but here where I live, the school lunches are fantastic. If I don't like the main course then I can just get a bunch of tuna salad or something similar and usually I really enjoy it. I should also mention that the new standard here is "Every school meal will have a plant based version or a completely different plant based meal" We have a day in the week when they only serve plant based meals.
I would like use term free of charge but not totally free, because we have quite hard taxation in Finland. Generally food is ok and some cases it's the childs only warm meal in the day.
Had my last school lunch over 26 years ago, so nothing I can say is up to date. I see a lot of improvements have been made. Frankly I skipped most school lunches just because most meals had something I personally found disgusting. We didn't have any salad bars, we didn't self-serve, having a special diet meant you just didn't eat, and the bread was just crispbread. The food wasn't low quality although it was pretty tasteless since they seasoned it to suit as many as possible. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being only technically edible, 6 being my own everyday cooking, and 10 being the best meal I've ever had, it was at best a 4. Army food was at best a 6, but typically pretty close to school food.
When I was at school a long, long time ago the school lunches weren't as good as they are today. Hardly any choices and the quality was sometimes a bit off. These days the food is much better and I get to see that first hand as a cook. Normally I work a proper restaurant kitchen, but sometimes I help out at a school to get a good look how things have changed from my youth.
in my experience other schools in finland have way better food than others. for example in taht video they whowed multiple breads and a variety of salads but in my school its mostly just one and not both. also those seasonings and hot sauce do not exist in my school. even some salt is a blessing from above.
The food is always free of charge to everyone. If only some kids would get their food for free, that would put a stamp on a kid as coming from not so wealthy family. When everyone are called to do the same, you are equal with others.
Unfortunately, young people have much more money at their disposal than before. It's good that there's a limit, but too many, lian often skips school and goes for a hamburger. This was already when I was In elementary school, finished in 2006
When I was young. The food was made In The schools. And it was better. But now they make it In big kitchens and it is not so good. But still better than many places. But The two days of vegetarian food In A week is bad. Normal diet people wont eat it, because its not good. It is hard to make good vegeterian food cheap. The children come home Angry and hungry. I know many good vegetarian foods, but they dont make them. I think it is unreasionalible to serve that food for everyone. If you live In The arctic circle, you cant get good vegetarian food cheap Here.
Finnish school is still good I guess, but Finland has been dropping in Pisa studies. Especially boys have problems. They have tried to be too progressive, and not focusing enough on basic princibles.
There are massive problems with the implementation of this program though, mainly the outdated food triangle, badly planned dishes and milk propaganda.
I don't know where you went to school, but I was around during the same time and the scool lunch wasn't anything fancy but perfectly fine. Potatoes with minced meat sauce, chicken sauce and rice, mashed potatoes and wiener sauce, casseroles... And all with optional rye bread. I'd say it was pretty normal food and at least at our schools you could always ask for more.
Not only the food is free, the whole school is free
I know I'm a 🇫🇮
yeah
Every school is the same in Finland. The best school for your kid is the one that is nearest. Everything is free. That is why we pay taxes.
Not really the same.
Def not the same, I remember visiting my second cousin in Kemijärvi as a school lad. Me coming from Helsinki where school lunch in the early nineties was dodgy at best of times and my cousin enjoying reindeer stew and such up near Lapland. Very different depending on the size of the school. Then again my school had nearly 300 students while his had all of 35.
@@juhagabrieltakkinen1131 Schools are the same. Meaning that everyone gets to eat healthy. It doesn't matter if it's reindeer or beef or pork.
Not exactly. In middle and elementary schools the grading can be really different depending on the school and the teachers. Also teachers can be way more educated in some schools. Also the budget for school food is different in each city. What type of people go to that school also affects how it is to study in it. Yes, it should be the same but its not as simple
I went to a pretty small primary school and we had our own chef that prepared our food from scratch. We even had some days that we could suggest what food we wanted. And when i went to vocational school studying to be a electrician where we had chef's school also, the students prepared the food for the whole school😂
The food we had in school came from one big kitchen that sent out food to multiple schools, it sucked because the food always had to be reheated and it always ended up overcooked. I remember so many times the pasta was stuck in a big ball on the scoop.
Basically the same thing here too, but have to say that the students sometimes nailed the food but sometimes I just took salad. On the other side of the road, basically same school but included more under the same roof (elementary school and so on) had bought the meals from a company that also makes the food from scratch, well, is usually better. Of course there are some cases where it's the other way around but still.
Åbolands yrkesskola? :)
where is went to primary school there was their own garden with berry bushes , apple trees, growing paches and fields to grow potatoes and other veggies. so we used our biology hours and other lessions to plant the seeds and then in autum harvest the veggies and berries.
When I was in studying after "high school" I didn't have any money. I ate only bread at home, and got my only proper dinner free from school
There are definitely some cons to Finnish school lunches but overall I feel really lucky to have had them, even though I was occasionally a pretty picky eater. But just the fact that we can serve our selves and choose our portion sizes, had salad, bread, etc. is pretty cool, especially after I learned about school lunches in countries like the UK and US.
What are the cons of a free meal? ( Yhyy mä en tykkää lasagnesta niin meen heseen välitunnilla)
@@Mojova1 meillä kaikille kaupungin peruskouluille ruoka tuli yhdestä isosta keittiöstä, joka tarkoitti sitä, että kouluille saapunut ruoka piti uudelleen lämmittää, joka monesti teki ruoasta ylikypsää. Muistan niin monta kertaa kun pasta oli jäänyt kauhaan kiinni isona möykkyä.
@@Mojova1everyone was hungry in the early afternoon on a porridge day. Porridge is a breakfast, not a lunch.
@@viverefren siinä tapauksessa pitää laittaa palautetta keskuskeittiöön ja miettiä mahdollisuutta, että energialisäke valmistettaisiin paikan päällä.
@@uikonimi palautetta on sinne lähetetty pari vuotta sitten. En voi ite sanoa minkä laista ruokaa nykyään on kun en ole peruskoulussa enää.
Also university students will get really cheap lunches where maximum price is governed.
Yes. Finnish school lunch is free for all students. If staff wants to eat same food, they pay. It isn't expensive. Current price is 6€ for whole lunch. You can also buy leftover food for very cheap. Last time I buy food for me and my husbend, the whole meal for us both cost only 2,6€.
Huh. We pay around ~4,50€ per meal, and the supervising teachers for tax value (=less, I think it might actually be free? to them). That is for all levels, so daycare, primary and lukio (+ over here also the employees of town hall, who eat what the same food cooked at the school kitchen).
I grew up here, and 9/10 foods are and were delicious, even that 1/10 was edible. Our school's cooks are really great and we are so lucky we have them ❤
I started school in - 79 in a tiny school with around 50 pupils. We had our own cook and all the food was prepared at our school kitchen. The food was fantastic! Always fresh salads and bread. Sometimes we had competitions as to how many blood pancakes or spinach pancakes we could eat... 😂
On top of the lunch, we had a small snack every afternoon. It could be a piece of cheese with crackers or fruit or yogurt or fruit juice.
I really loved the food at school.
i have lunch benefit from employer but i still occationally just want to go to unicafe to enjoy the food rather than some fancypansy bistro 😂
I have gratefully eaten whatever they served, but some "cool kids" didn't, they went to a close by supermarket and bought what they preferred instead of vegetarian lunch (once per week), fish (also once per week), or a freezers delight (made from whatever were left over from previous days).
This was in junior-high by the way, in elementary school and high school everybody ate together. It was a nice social interaction in the middle of the day, where you can talk about your hobbies, recent episode of your favourite tv-show, or whatever was talk of the town that day. The social iteraction was very important, I could argue that it is even more important than the quality of the lunch itself.
Lunches at my universities were around 2€, schools before that (trade school, elementary, secondary high school) provided students with meals daily. And even in universities the price was reduced, since the goverment covers around half of the cost. So a fair deal since you can choose pretty freely what you want.
most people say that school food sucks, but the older you get the less people say so. mostly the bad food stigma, in my opinion, comes from the lack of seasoning as the food has to be appropriate for so many people. in younger ages the lack of seasonings you can add is minimal. but the older you get like secondary high and up, they expect you to not abuse the usage of salt etc. so you get more options. our middle school got rid or all seasonings because some lil shits (kevin = jonne) did pranks to each other and just dumped pepper on others food. >:(
in our vocational/trade school we have also a breakfast. different porridge and toppings depending on weekday. and a coffee break.
as a kid you don't really understand how much of a good thing the free food is and you take it for granted, but as you get older you understand the weight it has on learning and over all well being and equality.
i personally never ever have understanded how the food sucks? i ate it all and almost everytime i took more food as long as i had time to eat because i liked the food :D and yes, i never left anything on the plate. meanwhile i see other dumping half of the plate into the bin
I agree. I work in school, and lunches are really quite good. Normal finnish food :)
They should have shown the christmas spread. Ham, gravy, lingonberry jam, different root vegetable casseroles, potatoes, pickled herring, beet salad and mabye dessert.
And that one random day we get fries
Also the meme where tableware are glued to the wall with mashed potato
@@bubblenugget9240we didn't 😨
I was born and brought up in Hungary, in fact, in the "socialist" years. I had freshly prepared two-course school lunches (soups and seconds), from age 6-18. It was free for everyone. Everything was seasonal, bread baked that morning, and everything was prepared in the school from scratch. There was no choice, but I didn't know any vegetarians etc anyway.
Now I live in the UK and this is where I became a parent. I know exactly what you mean: processed, bad quality food reheated. There is often a salad bar, and a choice of three (meat / fish / vegetarian), but still it is not healthy, at least in my experience. They also feel the need to serve a sugary dessert every day.
I also lived in Finland and went to university there. We had to pay for lunches but had a reduction with the student cards. There was a "bath tub" full of fresh salad, and another with warm potatoes boiled with the skin on, you could have as much of those as you wanted with a paid meal. I don't think everything was made fresh, but I liked it.
In the small schools countryside at 90’s and early 20 we went to forest to pick blueberries for school kitchen 😂
I miss school food
I started my school 1963 at the age of 7 (actually 6 years 10 months). I had never problems with the school food, except when we had fish soup made of pike. Pike has lots of bones and I hated it. Otherwise the food was good.
A lot of things in Finland are pragmatic, not ideological. Like, if the question is "how will kids learn the most" then free school meals are a no-brainer, even when it doesn't suit everyone's ideology. Same with 45min classes, 15min breaks are that. Kids need fresh air and to move around, and to socialize on their own. It is very, very important to the way developing brains work. Again, there is a school of thought that sees that as "being too soft", they would rather see kids being in classes for 4 hours straight since that is more what worklife is like but.. who the fuck cares, we do what is best no matter if it is absolutely following some narrow ideology. You can see this in a lot things that seem weird to foreigners, there is a desired outcome and then steps you can take to get that outcome and it rarely fits into one single ideology. While Finland is a social democracy that is also not ideological choice but practical, it manages to produce certain outcomes that are desirable.
Only small war between ideological and pragmatical sides is the time when school day starts. Almost every expert and research hints to that way it would be beneficial to start hour later just based purely on biology and efficiency of learning and maybe less proplematic social behaviour. But it feels 8-16 days are so damn deep rooted, even othert parts of society have largely adopted flexible hours and even 24h businesses.
This def brought back memories from elementary. The municipal school lunch menu was determined weekly, and whenever we had steamed sausages and mashed potatoes, one of the cool teachers always wore a suit on the day to mark the occasion. It was always a special day...
Some of my favorites aside from the perpetual salad bar were pea soup and pancakes on most Thursdays, rice and beef, and ham and potato casserole. And before the end of the year holidays we had a big celebratory meal with the entire school :' )
it was great thing for me when i was in school when we are talking about food since my mother was one of the cooks so most of the times i got what i had home so i would say i loved the food we where getting in school 😅
I am so suprised that you are so suprised about this. This is absolutely how schoollunches are provived to all children or teachers everyday. And the quality of foodand taste is Ok or good. And yes all fresh and free.
Greetings from Finland. I remember from 60´s when I started my school. We start school here as 7 years old. We did not have in that time bread or milk, but we all had cows and our mothers wars home-mothers, so all mothers baked own bread and "pulla". I like most "korvapuusti" "box on the ear") and sokeripossu" ("suckerpig"). We took milk and bread from home, but we got warm lunch at school. When I stated s.c. middle school, we did not take milk and bread with us. Our school have always had own kitchen, and food was really healthy and tasted good. We never need to pay for school lunch, note before we start to study in university. I ave seen TV-documents of James Oliver from USA and we were terrifying of what children eat in USA as o school lunch. That´s not food... junk food ... poison!!!.
It is true that food is healthy and good in Finnish schools. Also people drink water, milk or juice - but there is not any sugar soda drinks. Also meals in Finnish army are good and healthy.
It's free for everyone.
When I started school in the late 80's we still had a dinner lady, only one food option, one mixed salad option, and milk came in single portion packages. The bread we had was mostly dry crisp bread, similar to Ryvita. During just my first six years in primary school we'd moved onto this self-serving model with some portion restrictions and rules, we had usually two salad options, occasionally fresh bread or a dessert, and milk came from a tap so we could have a re-fill if we chose to. Then again around a decade later I went back as a substitute teacher, and by then they'd added the vegetable option, freely available spices, and the selection of foods had become more international instead of serving only traditional Finnish dishes. But it's always been reasonably healthy, free of charge, and gotten rid of my hunger even on days I've not been a huge fan.
The schools will occasionally serve less healthy options too, like fries, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, or pizza, but maybe once a month. Desserts might be served weekly, but certainly not daily, and mostly they're things like fresh fruit, freshly made oven pancake with jam, or some kind of a fool ("kiisseli" in Finnish), sometimes ice cream or pastry. You'll basically never see crisps or candy in a Finnish school cafeteria.
in Finland, more taxes are paid on everything and it is diverted to, for example, school meals
School meals are free except for higher education levels such as universities. In my university, the basic, good and healthy lunch cost 1.10 euros and it was like any standard buffet-style food. You also had the option to pay for 5 euros if you wanted a legit Restaurant grade meals, like Steak meal or burger with fries and they were cooked by actual trained chefs.
And Thursday is traditionally peasoup day with traditional ovenpancake for pudding! It's the best day of the week! :3
Sadly the quality of Finnish education and school lunches have taken some huge losses lately in the name of political grand standing and international corporate greed being allowed into the Finnish school systems (the most idiotic thing ever)
Finland also has a huge self-interest in teaching children a versatile healthy diet and learn about food/food waste, since it translates directly to more informed and more fit citizens requiring less health care services than unfit/fat/obese population would. Not only that, they are more likely to have more energy and stamina for a bigger variety of jobs, which increases taxes and productivity
1:12 If you would separate the kids by whose parents are too poor to pay for their meals, it would be extremely harmful classism that goes against everything that Finland stands for and is trying to combat
School food was really good at my time, 80's and 90's. I lived in Lapland for some years and went to a smaller school with under 100 pupils. We had even sauteed reindeer as a school lunch. Totally restaurant class stuff that costs easily 30€ in a restaurant these days.
i have food like that every day in finland most launch places have this that kinda buffet set up.
Actually many secondary collages in serves also free porridge for the students in the mornings. Many young students don't eat at home in the mornings and their energy levels are low. This helps them to concentrate on study's better. It also is believed this lowers the amount of food that is left over in dinner time as they are not so hungry that they pile plates full of food that they then
can't eat fully.
It has been over 20 years from my school days, but I still remember all the good and the bad from them.
The good was that the food was always plentiful. Only once when I was 8 years old food ran out and our principal was furious to our kitchen staff about it.
The bad was that our schools own kitchen stopped making its own food and started to get the food from central kitchen somewhere and it was terrible! Too salty, potatoes were rubbery and they had big dark heart.
But classes through 7-9 in a different building (and college in the same different building) we had our own kitchen with lovely staff. Of course at that age one rebels against healthy school lunches (but still I ate them) but in the college me and my friends totally respected our free and high quality food and the kitchen staff. When we arrived we said "good day" and when we finished and left we thanked for the meal. Also sometimes we chatted with them and remembered to praise their food, since it was really good. And we rolled our eyes to those juniors who went to eat candy or pastries in the mall next to us and skipped their school lunch.
We also had some special days when there were tortillas or something like that. What a joyous occasions they were!
So yeah, Finnish school lunches rock!
Look at that beautiful seppo haircut at @7:20
Sweden has the same. Real food for free in school. Every country shuld do this.
My son gets these free meals at his daycare, which is part of a school. Some of the nutritional requirements are questionable - for example, they use low-fat milk, which I don't think is good for growing children, and recently they have started serving processed vegan meat substitutes sometimes - but I'll take that over having to prepare 10 extra meals a week.
When I was in the primary school, we had our own staff, two awesome cooks who made the food for us. It was so tasty, and definitely made with love. We didn't have a cafeteria, so we ate at the class, but it didn't confuse since the break was always one hour, combined so that we had about 30 min for eating and the rest playing outdoors. The school was small, only about 30 pupils, during the last year we were 28 pupils total. Then they shut it down, and I moved to a bigger school with like 300-400 pupils, and the quality of the food went down quite a bit, but was still healthy and nutritious. Just like the food shown here.
Fresh bread? For short period of time, i was working in school kitchen and we baked fresh bread every single day. There used to be 1-2 persons in baking station, and we made fresh buns for 800-1000 people and did it by hand, no rolling machines. Only exception was days when we had something like salmon soup, it was served with rye bread which came ready sliced from bakery.
I started school about 35 years ago and I always enjoyed the school lunches. Even when I was a little picky eater when I was young, I always liked some part of the meal served and older I really appreciated the school lunch. And now when I have children the school lunch is big part of our familys weekly eatings because we dont have to think about kids lunches on school days.
Hi Mert!
Long time follower, first time commenting, haha.
I love your videos! :)
But yeah, we don't have dinner laidies here in Finland.
It annoys me that people are complaining about the finnish school food nowadays and that sucks. But regarding to what I have seen in the Internet, finnish school lunch is top notch compared to many other countries. And what have I read it is sadly the only warm meal of the day for some :/
My mother was a head chef in a larger school complex (many different schools would dine here) and she would fight for the students to have a fresh and quality lunch when the schools wanted to cut back on ingredients.
I often had the same food at home so I knew what we would be having for dinner :D Before I went to the secondary school (where my mom was at) I would ask my mom after her work day "Hey mom! What did you have today?" - And I would have the same delicious meal!
We also had our own chef at elementary school and we all loved her. After we ate we went in to thank her!
Even the salad was so appealing in every school I went that you just had to take some. I wish I had been eating more salads back in the day :)
When I continued my studies further we had this cafeteria where the students made the food and it was great!
Greetings from finland.😊 I remember back when I was in 7th grade I had this one boy in my class who refused to take anything from the salad bar dispite my teacher told him to do so multipal times EVERYDAY.😂 I'm a working 21 yr old woman now btw.
In my elementary school during my first few years we used to not have a "salad bar". It was just some mixed salad that was rarely any good, i mean i would eat it but not much of it. It was such a cool thing that me and my friends talked highly of when "the salad bar" became the norm, felt like it was more luxurious. Ever since every learning institution ive gone to has had a salad bar for every day lunches, and every time i started i felt positively surprised about it, though i do take it for granted now that ive had it for so long.
Love this reaction 😄
You find this food system also in sweden, norway and denmark, heallty for the future-kids.
It forbidden to take to school candy, buns, chips, chocolate etc.. as lunch or snack.
Some school serves even breakfast for lirtle cost, if parents font have time to give a properly heallty one...
in Sweden and Finland, not in Norway or Denmark... I have been working in Norway and I noticed that school children often eat in grocery stores that often even have microwave ovens....
It may be forbidden but that just makes the candy taste better😛
Every finish in this chat "When i was young, everything was better"
Yes free for everybody. Those kids who don't get breakfast at home before school can also go to school for breakfast. And during the covid when the schools were closed kids had their foodbox they could use at home.
I'm 38, I still think about the school meatloaf sometimes. Iove'd it.
I'm Finnish (I'm 13 years old)
School is free and so is the hot lunch. It's pretty good considering that it's free. But if you're under 16 you know how the food actually is...😂
When I was at school obviously I wanted to have that fast food stuff, but looking back. The food was very good and healthy. I have been in a small school where we ate at the class rooms, but also bigger schools where we ate the cafeteria. The only lunch lady we had was the one who brings more food for the "buffet" when it´s ending.
It is free for every student, just like school in general is free for all of the children...no matter the race, gender, money etc.
When I went to the university, that is where I had to start paying for my lunch...and it was just like 2-3 euros...so tiny amount.
Yes, this is totally true. It was when I was in school. Got different food from kitchen since I was ( and still I am ) vegetarian. Now my son is ten years old and we can check the menu in the internet. Always available for all vegetarian food or ” normal ” food. If they have some trip or go to skiing etc. Shool give them takeaway food or snacks.
I remember the delicious dishes our lunch lady made in the 90s. Everything changed after elementary school, because all the food came from the central kitchen. After 24 years, I still miss the woman who makes the best lasagna and mashed potatoes.
Hi!🇫🇮 I love your content.😊❤ Idk about UK but in my school bulling was a big no no. I got bullied alot but they always did something about it.😊
Looks very familiar. I was in school over three decades ago and our school meals were very similar.
You are so impressed our breads. Breads usually come from bakerys and salads are made in same day as they are served and they are fresh.
Yes the school lunches are good, basic food, free of charge. And I think they have gotten better and better with time. When I was in elementary school in the 90s, there were a lot of jokes about "rubber potatoes," as in boiled potatoes that had the texture and bounciness of rubber. But I've eaten at school cafeterias that I imagine serve similar food to elementary schools many times since then, and the food is varied, decently prepared and tastes great! Not fancy restaurant level of deliciousness, but hearty, decent fare.
School lunch free of charge to everyone when in compulsory education since 1948. The obligation to take part in basic education since 1921.
Everything in public school is free. Food, books, teatching etc. You can have even pencils, sharpeners and erasers for free if you want them. Students need to buy just their own backpacks, pencil cases and the contact plastic to protect the books. But if you are from a poor family the government will give them money to buy these things, the money is just not much so they need to get the most cheap ones in the store. The food is okay, the quality has changed for worse over the years, because the amount of people has increased so the food needs to be cheaper. Finland is very popular for their using of potato, but the potatos on schools are from Poland and because they are not boiled but steamed the texture is like rubber. We called them rubber potatos because they would bounce on the table :D So usually the food is not made from scratch, it comes in vaccuum packages and they just heat it up and mayde add spices or cream. Usually the food was pretty good, but some foods were so bad and weird that no one was eating it even at home like herring casserole. This all is paid with tax money.
In my school hamburgers were served only on the very last day before summer break. 😂
Everything in schools incuding school lunches are free of charge. All education is free up to university degrees. School lunches are planned so that they are healthy. Many schools slso offer breakfast or an afternoon snack.
I worked at school kitchen, and food there is awesome🙂 Salads and tasty maincourse. Just a good buffet😄
when i was in elemntary school here in finland i somehow dropped plate and teacher was like eat the food from the floor
Its just smart to let the pupils get their own food, it is taught that you eat what you take, so you can build up more with some and leave something you dont like out.. so it reduces the food waste
2:26 yeah that's not the bread we ate when i was a kid in finland. we ate something called "näkkileipä" it is like the cheapest bread you can buy here and i don't even know if you can call it bread :D
Yeah, we also had mostly rye crisp bread or just basic rye bread, we very rarely had any kind of white bread like in this video.
I think I always had the option of a couple different types of näkkileipä and fresh bread, but I can't be completely certain.
I still eat a lot of näkkileipä, here in the UK they sell at least Ryvita that's pretty close to the Finnish version. A couple of years ago they started selling hapankorppu here too, it's even called Finn crisp 😁 Nothing wrong with those, perfect reserve to keep in the cupboards for whenever I run out of bread otherwise. (Although I bake my own now so rarely run out, the quality of fresh bread sold in the British supermarkets is quite lacking compared to what I'm used to.)
In my opinion the schools serve dishes with very high carb percentage and too little good quality proteins. It's not as bad as super processed foods, but the carb mushes are not that great either... Of course its better than nothing, but that amount of fast carbs can be inflammatory and make students tired after meals. Most proteins could be quite a lot more expensive to integrate to the free meals though so I can partly understand why its so carb heavy.
I agree, although I think certain plant proteins (beans, legumes, soy etc.) would be easy to have as a side dish!
ok here we go. I'm 46 now and i had good free meals when i was in school. We didn't know sushi or asian flavors. Just good basic food and everybody ate and makaroonilaatikko say was the best. I actually searched if there is makaroonilaatikko in other countries: no. I was surprised....not even Sweden- No. I still love it. Simple to make and you can add veggies or what ever you want to it. I usually put frozen veggies nowadays. I think every country has some food that they love and other ppl are just...hmmm :D
It's true, I have had some expeience with both swedish and finnish schools. And by and large, we follow the same model :) And it has been a great help both with life, but also in the social area. I still have friends since that time, and we still meet up and cook together if possible during visits :)
I had a chip van outside my school in 1989 haha basically I had heartburn at 13😂
We have food which might looks horrible, but the taste isn't bad and it's usually healthy
I check every week what my kids have a lunch at school... but also what kids don,t eat.. rest food goes for church whos give it for poor people.. so it wont end up for trash =) greetings from Fin =)
obviously all school lunches are free for everyone. making someone pay for school lunches is inhumane
I used to dislike the school lunches here mainly because I lived in a pretty small city and the food that they used to serve was mostly traditional finnish food which I am not a big fan of. Then I moved out to study in the captial region and the food quality skyrocketed, I have heard some horror stories from other schools in helsinki and their food but here where I live, the school lunches are fantastic. If I don't like the main course then I can just get a bunch of tuna salad or something similar and usually I really enjoy it.
I should also mention that the new standard here is "Every school meal will have a plant based version or a completely different plant based meal"
We have a day in the week when they only serve plant based meals.
I would like use term free of charge but not totally free, because we have quite hard taxation in Finland. Generally food is ok and some cases it's the childs only warm meal in the day.
Had my last school lunch over 26 years ago, so nothing I can say is up to date. I see a lot of improvements have been made.
Frankly I skipped most school lunches just because most meals had something I personally found disgusting. We didn't have any salad bars, we didn't self-serve, having a special diet meant you just didn't eat, and the bread was just crispbread. The food wasn't low quality although it was pretty tasteless since they seasoned it to suit as many as possible. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being only technically edible, 6 being my own everyday cooking, and 10 being the best meal I've ever had, it was at best a 4. Army food was at best a 6, but typically pretty close to school food.
When I was at school a long, long time ago the school lunches weren't as good as they are today. Hardly any choices and the quality was sometimes a bit off. These days the food is much better and I get to see that first hand as a cook. Normally I work a proper restaurant kitchen, but sometimes I help out at a school to get a good look how things have changed from my youth.
Unfortunately nowadays there are too many pupils who don't want to eat at school and they even haven't eaten the breakfast!
😢
in my experience other schools in finland have way better food than others. for example in taht video they whowed multiple breads and a variety of salads but in my school its mostly just one and not both. also those seasonings and hot sauce do not exist in my school. even some salt is a blessing from above.
The food is always free of charge to everyone. If only some kids would get their food for free, that would put a stamp on a kid as coming from not so wealthy family. When everyone are called to do the same, you are equal with others.
the school food used to be way better but their cutting costs a lot nowadays
Hamburgers, chiken nuggett, pizza 😂😂😂😂
Unfortunately, young people have much more money at their disposal than before. It's good that there's a limit, but too many, lian often skips school and goes for a hamburger. This was already when I was In elementary school, finished in 2006
All lunches in britain to me were two small bags of crisps.
Even university students have to pay just about 3 euros for a HUGE extremely healthy lunch
When I was young. The food was made In The schools. And it was better. But now they make it In big kitchens and it is not so good. But still better than many places. But The two days of vegetarian food In A week is bad. Normal diet people wont eat it, because its not good. It is hard to make good vegeterian food cheap. The children come home Angry and hungry. I know many good vegetarian foods, but they dont make them. I think it is unreasionalible to serve that food for everyone. If you live In The arctic circle, you cant get good vegetarian food cheap Here.
Only thing I can say about the Finnish school food is that it's fine. Not bad, not great, just meh
Finnish school is still good I guess, but Finland has been dropping in Pisa studies. Especially boys have problems. They have tried to be too progressive, and not focusing enough on basic princibles.
Yeah it is definitely not bad but I think it has too much carbs (especially too much grain based carbs)and too little protein.
Food has been free from 1948
It may be the healthiest but that doesn't really matter cus many of the kids don't even eat it and instead go buy candy and energy drinks. 😀
Sweden is the same
Bro don’t say British or Bri’ish bro say Brit’ish.
There are massive problems with the implementation of this program though, mainly the outdated food triangle, badly planned dishes and milk propaganda.
That is true
In the 80-90's the school-lunch was really poor. Just some soup and dry bread. Not enough for yougsters.
I don't know where you went to school, but I was around during the same time and the scool lunch wasn't anything fancy but perfectly fine. Potatoes with minced meat sauce, chicken sauce and rice, mashed potatoes and wiener sauce, casseroles... And all with optional rye bread. I'd say it was pretty normal food and at least at our schools you could always ask for more.
In my schools lunches were just fine.
@@mikkop71 Not in eastern-Finland in 80-90's. We were hungry all the time !