Comparing school lunches around the world is one of my favorite ways to dive into the intricacies of another culture. We can learn a lot about the geography of a place, the degree to which they are community-focused, and their values around food by examining how school lunch is served. Take, for example, the multi-course meals with real silverware that young students are served in France, or the way that Japanese students are expected to serve their classmates and clean their school afterward.
I was a teacher at a private school in Medellín, Colombia for a year and found that there were many differences between the school lunch food served there and the school lunch food and practices at schools in the United States. I tried to document most of the snacks and lunches that we were served, so you can compare it with your own culture(s).
Note that this is a snapshot of one school in one city in Colombia and doesn’t mean that all schools in Colombia are the same. Also, this is a private bilingual school, so the facilities and food are nicer than a typical public school in Colombia.
The school schedule
The school day started around 7:00 a.m. and ended around 3:00 p.m. Younger students ate earlier and left school earlier but everyone had a morning snack and then lunch. High school students had a 30-minute snack break around 10:30 a.m. and then a 50-minute lunch at 1:45 p.m.
In Colombia, the morning snack is called refrigerio and often consists of an arepa, a thick corn tortilla, or a palito de queso, a breaded and fried cheese stick.
Students could choose to bring their own snack and/or lunch or eat food from the cafeteria. About half of the students brought their lunch from home. They usually brought food like rice that needed to be warmed up, so there were many microwaves available for student use. I didn’t see many cold salads or sandwiches. The school generously provided international teachers snack and lunch, so I got to try lots of new foods.
There were a handful of students and teachers who were vegetarians. I am not a vegetarian but don’t like to eat a lot of meat. There was often a large piece of meat, but if you don’t see meat in the photo it’s because I chose not to eat it. The kind cafeteria staff was always very concerned that I was not getting enough to eat 🙂
Lunch foods in Colombia
El almuerzo is lunch and it’s generally a bigger meal than dinner. For drinks, there were always multiple kinds of tropical fruit juices available for lunch, and milk was often served with the snack.
Flip through the image gallery below to see the typical lunch foods at my school in Colombia:
Looking for a school in Colombia? Here’s a list of international schools in Medellín.
Great photos!