When lunchtime begins at He­xing Elementary School in Hu­kou Township, Hsin­chu County, the children quickly queue up for their food, doing so in a remarkably orderly fashion. But what’s really surprising is that virtually all of the students, from the first graders to the sixth, seem enthusiastic about the food, filling their bowls to the brim.

Can they eat all that?

“Our waste food bin is so empty it practically sparkles,” says Wu You, the school’s principal. She flips open He­xing’s waste records, which go back years and show that the school’s 150 students and faculty threw away a total of less than 1 kilo of food on any given day, no matter what was on the menu.

The secret to getting students to not waste food turns out to be carefully designed menus, which at He­xing include organic meals every Tuesday and Friday. The kitchen staff also whips up a batch of piping-hot organic soy milk on those days to encourage the kids to fill up.

The organic lunch itself includes a multigrain rice that is three times as expensive as ordinary rice, organic eggs with rich orange yolks, and naturally raised pork from Hualien, as well as certified-organic legumes, vegetables, and fruit.

The students and teachers at Hsinchu County’s Hexing Elementary School are all able to enjoy organic lunches (right) and piping hot organic soy milk.

How is it that the nearly 700 students and teachers at He­xing and nearby Fu­xing, Fu­long, and Puhe are able to enjoy organic meals twice a week when the schools are budgeted just NT$32 per meal?

County Road 117, which runs from Xin­feng Township in the north to Xiang­shan District in the south, is the main artery linking Hsin­chu City with the northwest coastal region of the county. He­xing, Fu­xing, Fu­long, and Puhe Elementary are clustered together within a few kilometers of each other at the road’s northern extremity.

That these rural schools have been able to provide organic lunches to their students in spite of their limited resources is a credit to their “mama principals.”

“It’s quite a coincidence that all four of our schools have female principals. We all have a tendency to mother our students a bit, to seek ways to get them to eat better, which is how we got into organics,” explains He­xing principal Wu You.

Wu You spearheaded the formation of the organic meals consortium. Guided by her good friend Wu Mei­mao, who worked for the Development Center for Biotechnology, she began buying organic produce for her school’s lunches some seven years ago, sourcing it from Aboriginal farmers in Hsin­chu’s Jian­shi Township and Tao­yuan’s Fu­xing Township.

“The school was willing to support organic agriculture so that our kids could eat healthier. Why wouldn’t we go into organics?” asks Wu.

 

But organic ingredients cost many times more than conventionally grown ingredients, and organic lunches include a smaller variety of dishes. During the first year of the He­xing organics program, the school relied on help from Green Formosa Front president Wu Tung-jye, who raised NT$5 per meal for it from the Hsin­chu Science Park. The school made up the rest of the cost differential through Wu You’s zero-waste program.

Wu You explains that the zero-waste program controls costs by recording the amount of leftover food every day, then using that figure to make adjustments to the amounts ordered. For example, if an especially large amount of meat in a given dish goes uneaten, the kitchen will use less the next time it makes the dish.

Huang Wen­ding, director of He­xing’s general affairs office, says that the zero-waste program has been saving the school more than NT$300 per day, which over the long term has helped to offset the cost of organic ingredients. In fact, by the time the organics program was into its second year, it no longer needed outside funding support and was able to serve up one organic lunch each week.

Nearby Fu­xing, Fu­long, and Puhe Elementary Schools responded positively to He­xing’s organic experience and with it formed the County Road 117 Organic School Lunch Consortium in 2008. Utilizing its increased buying power to reduce ingredient costs, the group has now expanded its organic lunch offerings from one day per week to two.

 

The consortium owes much of its success to the schools’ four “mama principals,” their planning, their patience, and their conscientiousness in particular.

For example, Fu­long principal Wu Ming­zhu managed to cut food waste even further by having students eat together in the school cafeteria rather than in their classrooms.

“When the whole school eats together, students get to chat with one another at their tables,” says Wu. “Teachers are also able to observe each student’s eating habits. When kids interact and receive encouragement from their peers, we see fewer problems with picky eating.”

Wu You’s “meddlesomeness” extends beyond her own campus. For example, she persuaded nearby breakfast stands not to sell sugary drinks to the children in hopes of weaning the kids off of junk food.

She also often invites students who don’t like multigrain rice, carrots, bell peppers, or other specific foods to eat with her. During those meals, she let’s them in on a secret: “I don’t like carrots either. They taste strange, don’t they?”

When the students agree, she tells them, “Carrots are very nutritious and especially good for your eyes. Since I didn’t want to be nearsighted, I forced myself to eat them. You know what happened? After a while, I realized that they weren’t so bad. Why don’t you give them a try?” She’s found that almost none of her students can resist such sympathetic encouragement.

The hard work of these four “mama principals” has brought a surprising level of renown to the organic lunches along County Road 117, and has even led some like-minded parents to go out of their way to enroll their children here. The success of the school’s zero-waste organic movement is ushering in a new era in Taiwan’s school-lunch program.

The four “mama principals” at schools along County Road 117 do their utmost to secure healthy organic produce for their kids. He­xing Elementary principal Wu You is at front left.