The GAL Someș-Nadăș (don’t worry, Romanians also find it hard to pronounce our name) team was part of the first study visit within the Healthy Wave project. We went to Almada, where our partners from Agrupamento de Escolas Anselmo de Andrade welcomed us and shared their knowledge and know-how with us. And what an experience it was!
The Portuguese team went above and beyond to make our visit memorable. They took us to visit some of their schools, served us school lunches in their school canteens, took us gardening, and explained how they do and teach healthy food in schools.
We enjoyed presentations and discussions with representatives of all stakeholders involved in the process of serving meals in their school, from the municipality and other decision-makers to teachers, school staff, and students.
Some of the aspects that stood out to us:
They follow the Mediterranean diet guidelines: natural ingredients, no mambo-jumbo spice mixes added, giving taste with herbs instead of salt, cooking with extra-virgin olive oil instead of animal-sourced fat, having vegetables with every meal;
Students are also involved in the process. They have a say when it comes to the food that is served, and everything is open for discussion;
The remaining food of each day is collected by an NGO and taken to less-privileged families, while leftovers from the plates go to animal farms;
Regardless of their diets (vegetarian, intolerances, no pork etc.), students enjoy healthy, balanced meals;
The school curricula include a significant part about food and nutrition.
We work with the secondary school in Baciu, a village adjacent to Cluj-Napoca. The reality there is quite different from the one we saw in Almada. It’s nice to dream that the school in Baciu will one day have a canteen, but the reality is we might have to wait a bit longer for that.
Our students only started to get warm meals subsidised by the government in May. And while the Portuguese are lucky enough to have a relatively long history of healthy meals in schools, we used to give kids some bread and a small box of milk and that was about as healthy as it got.
However, dreams aside, our partners from Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, who were also part of this visit, helped us get things straight. We cannot change national policies or municipality decisions, but we can change how we do our share. This is why we decided to focus on education. We already started working on the structure and content of an optional course on healthy food that will be taught to students at Baciu. It will be a long journey, but we are convinced it is worth all the effort.
Cheers to Almada & Erasmus MC for inspiring and helping us through! We look forward to our next face-to-face meeting!
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