School meals in Poland

Unless she wasn't Polish :)

I don't think this article was posted here, was it?

nauka.trojmiasto.pl/Co-jedza-nasze-dzieci-w-szkolach-i-przedszkolach-n126803.html

What bothers me about that article is the bit about the vegetarian family who were told by the director of the pre-school that their child could just 'not eat' - ?? seriously?? and their older daughter at primary school simply doesn't eat the school lunch. Are these two children going without food all day??

Most kids don't eat the school lunch. They have sandwiches and fruit/snack that they bring from home.
Pre-school is trickier.

It's a great example of the poor relationship that Polish people have with food. It's treated as an afterthought, something that is designed for calorie intake and little else. Things are changing among the younger generation, but the mentality in the public sector is that food is something that should be made as cheaply as possible, consequences be damned. It's the same problem in public hospitals.


We don't talk about my battle to eliminate crap from lunchboxes. Or more specifically, my battle with stupid teachers who thought that it was fine for kids to be bringing large amounts of sweets daily.

Shouldn't it be parents?

You'd think so, but some of them had very curious ideas about nutrition. My favourite situation involved a PE teacher telling a parent straight-out that her daughter was obese and needed to go on a diet, and the mother claimed that her nutrition was "correct". It turned out that the mother's idea of nutrition involved two "pizzerki" bought from Biedrońka and a packet of crisps!

Stilo it's The oarents WHO preparat The Good so if you nawet to have A Light with someone about it it would be them

Omg, sorry about that, my phone was set on Polish.

Still it's the parents who prepare the food so if you had to have a fight with someone about it it should be them

Omg, sorry about that, my phone was set on Polish.

Still it's the parents who prepare the food so if you had to have a fight with someone about it it should be them

...Lenka? have you got a cat crawlling all over your keyboard? :D

But no - the teachers should be enforcing the rules. We had a rule about reasonably healthy food only, but the teachers were unwilling to do the right thing by confiscating the junk (the kids could get something from the kitchen if they didn't have anything else) and writing to the parents to come and collect it from the school office. There was a clear policy in place, but several teachers from 1-3 thought it was 'cruel' to force them to only have healthy things.

Parents were told repeatedly, but some of them were incredibly stubborn on the topic and unwilling to listen.

Im going to take you up on this offer. She said she spoke with few teachers and it was the same argument 'she will be sad if she is the only one without something sweet' and it has been 3 dentists advice that the kid shouldn't eat sweets.

Send me an e-mail with as much details as possible (preferably with the names of the dentists in question - it'll be useful to refer to their advice) and I'll write you a very strongly worded letter that says "either stop it, or this is going further". ;)

To be honest, if the teachers are being twats about it, the only thing to do is to go in hard. If the headteacher requests a meeting, she should also make a very clear point that there should be an independent person there (preferably one of the school governors) to take the minutes of the meeting so that the school can't backtrack later.

I will do although I don't think the mother is prepared to push any harder than the letter. The hope is that it will work

Don't worry, I think some references to government policies and so on will do the trick nicely ;)

I remember that the food at the university canteen was so cheap and so good that many residents of the nearby housing estate came to the canteen with portable food containers and bought dinners for themselves and their families.

I noticed the same thing at the hospital cafeterias where we live.

Are there still cheap milk bars in Poland with super good Polish food?

Yes, sort of. The 'bar mleczny' has become a trendy thing amongst hipsters etc. There's a kind of fashion for PRL stuff as a retro cool vibe. The gentrified milk bars aimed at that market are more expensive but still cheap enough. Then there are the 'jedzenie domowa' type places for ordinary working people who want a filling lunch. I don't know what you personally consider cheap, but they're affordable. The food is ok, if you're hungry it will fill you and that's about it in my opinon. It's acceptable.

I've eaten in this one,food is very basic, quite salty. Interesting article:

projektownia-wakacji.pl/recenzje-restauracje/bar-mleczny-familijny-warszawa/

When we go to Poland, we regularly go to "Food by Weight". In the meantime, it seems to me to be expensive, especially since the plates are large and one always puts more than enough.

I go the the one called "Marche" in Zlota trasay & Arkadia mall,pretty good variety.


LOL My experience with taking Europeans on all you can eat buffets in the US is they fill up there plates so much that they cant even stuff they took,while most Americans will go 3/5 times to pick up stuff,same here I see people not use to that fill up there plates and then leave some food or stuff themselves.Whenever if I am with a lokal,there bill is 40/50/60 zlots compared to mine 25 to 35 and I am full lol watching them struggle to eat the whole food they took lol.

My last bill was PLN 200 for 3 people.

lol almost there must be including drinks(compot,juice etc) lol almost 66.66 pln:)

However, since our son especially took too much, we packed the rest and took it home.

Might as well as you already paid for it lol but strictly not allowed in buffets.

This is Poland and its time honoured traditions. If in the past Poles had eaten like Italians, they wouldn`t have survived harsh winters in Eastern Europe.