Lunch for US$1

To be completely accurate, this meal cost me $1.03. But the rounding makes the headline look better.

I don't usually write about food. I write about coins, gold and silver. But there's a first time for everything. Sometimes I want to write about something else. To be specific, I was inspired by @silversaver888's food articles.

I live in the Czech Republic, in the centre of Europe. My country was communist between 1948 and 1989. Overall, it was not a good period in our history. But occasionally something that was good was created. One of the good things in our country is school meals for children.

Each school has a kitchen and dining room where lunch is cooked for the children. The kitchens are staffed by professional cooks, and the kitchens are modernly equipped and subsidized by the state and municipalities. The aim is to cook healthy and tasty meals for the children.

As a rule, it is possible to choose from two or more dishes. Vegetables and fruit are often added to the meal. At least once a week, younger children are given fruit for snack. The menu is designed according to mandatory standards, where many indicators are monitored, including caloric value and health benefits.

Here's a sample of my lunch today. Vegetable soup, pancakes filled with turkey and vegetables, topped with parmesan cheese. Sweet sponge cake for dessert.

When I open the pancake, the contents look like this.

Let me zoom in a bit more on the photo.

I'm not a child. I'm an almost 60-year-old teacher. But as a school employee, I'm also entitled to school meals. The cost of the lunches is partly covered by my employer. I'm really only paying that one dollar per serving.

Children pay according to their age. From $1.25 to about $1.75. Still, I find it very cheap considering the high quality.

That's an interesting fact. Theoretically, anyone can eat in our school cafeteria. The cafeterias have a capacity. They have to take children who go to school and school staff as boarders as a priority. The rest of the capacity can be taken by anyone.

The full price of the lunch I'm showing is about $4. That doesn't seem like much to me. Yet few people eat in schools. Apparently the state was thinking of the elderly retirees. But if anyone comes to eat here anymore, it's the employees of the surrounding businesses. Still, we have spare capacity.

I'm writing about $4 for lunch. I should mention that the average salary here is about $1 800 a month. But I'd have to write a study on how people live here, what the price level is, so that everyone can get an idea of how this type of eating is preferred here. Maybe someone would be interested.

So far I've written about positive things. So, of course, there are also negatives. There are poor people in our country too. But not so poor that they are hungry. Our health care and education are good and free. Again, I write about positive things!

Poor children usually don't eat in school cafeterias. They buy unhealthy chips, pizza, candy, sugary drinks. They are obese. They go to McDonald's, KFC, etc. The food is much more expensive there. Yet below a certain level of family income they could have free lunches at school.

But this type of eating is a kind of stigma for the poor. They don't want it. The cost of living for the poor is probably higher than for the rich. Poverty is hereditary. It is a pattern of behaviour. I am only writing about my country. I have no right to judge anything further from our borders.

Thank you for stopping by, thank you for reading and commenting. I wonder how it is in other countries. Maybe this will be inspiration for an article for someone as well.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)