Unwrapping school lunch

Students are important stakeholders in school food programs. Yet children’s daily experiences and voices often overlooked advocacy around food. In Canada, where the federal government recently expressed interest creating a National School Food Program, nearly no research has documented first-hand of children during lunch. This ethnographic study draws on data collected 36 lunchtimes three Canadian schools transitional period district’s lunch program. The findings unwrap powerful role students’ perceptions relationships to shaping their social interactions, sense care, connection, identity. Classroom observations coupled with photos lunches demonstrate wide diversity foods eaten at nuanced, complex, sometimes divergent meanings give food, people involved preparing, serving, supervising, sharing lunchtime experiences. demonstrated in-depth knowledge choices attitudes peers actively marked out identities vis-à-vis frequently talked about as site care support, both work that played were major part Understanding intricacies experiences, including relationships, meanings, values shape lunch, will be critical for robust programs policies Canada better serve needs reduce rather than reproduce existing health inequalities.