How can we establish a good lunch culture at all primary schools? That was the central question at an InnovationNetwork meeting on Eating Well Together. The participants were all people who agree that it’s not normal for so many primary school children in the Netherlands to eat little or nothing at lunchtime. The women outnumber the decision-makers (mainly men….) – a fact worth pondering.

Dutch Rail was not being very cooperative. Half an hour before the start, a stream of texts came in. “Train stopped in countryside, may be here for keeps…”. Fortunately the proceedings got underway with only a short delay.

Fred van der Zwaard of Creapolis demonstrated a web tool (‘Lunch Ladder’) designed to stimulate schools (parents, teachers, administrators) to invest in lunches. Femke Hoekstra of the Amsterdam Municipal Medical Department presented a Lunch Fan, consisting of a practical overview of school lunch suggestions. And Bas van Abel of the Waag Society showed how a lunch courier system from Mumbai (India) could work for the Netherlands too: the Dabbawala.

Lunch needn't come in a rectangular box.

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Tellingly, one sigh of complaint could be heard throughout: why are we in the Netherlands so backward when it comes to lunch? Few countries neglect lunch the way we do in the Netherlands. And it’s an across-the-board pattern – at home, at work and, above all, at schools. Even an American lady I spoke to recently told me that after all those years living in our country she still cannot understand why we make do with cheese or jam sandwiches.

And this is what the lunch itself can look like.

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Everyone realizes that with so much ground to catch up it can take a very long time to establish a decent lunch culture. And that it is not normal that so many children eat little or no lunch. Even though funding and a good organization are in place. We even have statistics to prove it!

Fortunately there was little sign of pessimism at the meeting. Quite the opposite in fact: everyone was impatient to get started and make things happen. That made me feel good inside.

But I also still keep thinking back to a head of a special needs school for chronically ill children. She had sent an email saying she wouldn’t be attending the meeting. Her story in brief was that she had organized good lunches for all pupils for dozens of years, and everyone was happy. Everyone clearly saw how important a good lunch is to these children. But the lunches are under pressure because of cash constraints. So this school head had a very different question from the one posed at the meeting: how can I preserve my carefully cultivated lunch culture? I understood why she had decided not to attend and have arranged to visit the school some time soon.

The Netherlands: rich in agriculture, poor in lunch culture.