Seaweed salad and no 'woke sushi': How Japan does school lunches

Earlier this year the man behind budget cuts to the school lunch programme, associate education minister David Seymour, brought Japanese food into the picture when he declared that sushi is woke.

Today, the Japanese embassy in Wellington showed how a Japanese school lunch actually looks and tastes.

It served up three examples of the type of meals 99 percent of Japanese schools provide, each including a main and side, soup, a glass of milk, and a pudding or piece of fruit.

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The dishes include chicken mince with rice, seaweed salad, a pudding flavoured with red bean and matcha tea, and a soup with tofu and pork.

And yes, they taste delicious though the seaweed and matcha flavours might be challenging for young Western palates.

Disappointingly there is no sushi - woke or otherwise. That's because Japan's food hygiene rules require that school lunches are cooked.

The embassy says it is not trying to teach New Zealand any lessons, but comparisons are inevitable, especially when one of the people at the table is the principal of a school in the free lunch programme.

Over a bowl of curry and rice, Kaitao Intermediate principal Phil Palfrey says the Japanese meals are nothing like the mass-produced, reheated packaged meals his pupils receive.

"It doesn't really compare. It was very delicious today, looked nice, tasted nice. Totally different to what our kids receive. Unfortunately," he says.

Palfrey says his pupils would love the meals.

Other guests are positive that Japan's school lunches would go down a treat in New Zealand schools.

"So much better than packed lunches," says one.

"I certainly would have eaten that as a seven or eight-year-old because I got Marmite sandwiches if I was lucky and that was so much better than that," says another.

Takako Taguchi, the head of the embassy's Japan Information and Cultural Centre, explains that more than half of Japanese schools get their lunches from a lunch centre and the remainder make their own.

She says pupils are involved with serving and cleaning up, and teachers eat with their students.

Overall it is an important part of Japanese culture and tourists have even begun paying to experience a school lunch.

"I recently heard in the news Japanese school experience tours are trending right now... they wear a fake uniform and they sit and take class," she says.

Taguchi says her own memories of school lunches are positive.

"It was very good. My old school was famous for a good lunch so I enjoyed it a lot."

Japanese school lunches are not free - parents are charged about $3 per meal.

Taguchi says that pays for the food while local councils pay the remaining costs such as staff and power, which come to a further $3 or so.

She says the first school lunches were provided to poor students at a private school in 1889 and a government-mandated programme was later introduced to ensure children were well-nourished.

A menu provided by the embassy shows the scheme is used to introduce Japanese children to a range of cuisines, with paella and spaghetti featuring.

Taguchi says New Zealand is more expensive than Japan and she is impressed the New Zealand scheme is being delivered for nearly $4 a meal at self-catering schools with students in Years 7 and above, and for a bit less than that for the School Lunch Collective model.

Japan's ambassador to New Zealand Makoto Osawa says his country's lunch programme plays a big role in Japanese people's lives.

"We learned a lot of things, for example the importance of a balanced diet, the importance of collaboration for preparation of the school lunch," he says.