In Borås, the municipality has changed several things about school food due to the pandemic.
It is about stricter hygiene, longer distances in the serving area, fewer students around the tables and longer opening hours.
In addition, Borås has reduced the range of salads to ease congestion.
- Often the salad buffet is a bit of a bottleneck.
We often have maybe ten, twelve varieties to choose from and then you have to stop and choose which salad you want.
Then it takes time and it becomes crowded, says Magnus Bagge, operations manager for diet and cleaning in the trial and primary school in Borås City.
Iman Iman is in fifth grade at Viskaforsskolan and also sees an advantage with a reduced range of salads.
- Then there are not a lot of people who take vegetables.
There will be fewer who take and then you will not be infected.
Sees risk with reduced supply
The National Food Administration sees a risk with a reduced salad supply.
Ulrika Backlund is a dietitian at the National Food Administration.
She says that school meals can account for half of all vegetables that children eat in one day.
- Vegetables are so useful for the body.
If there is less to choose from in the salad buffet and children eat less of the vegetables, we see that it can make a big difference to the children's health, she says.
And it can depend on how the children eat at home in the family.
If school food changes, it can hit the children who eat worse at home harder, she says.
- Then their health can be affected more than for the children who eat well at home.
Choose pizza salad
Magnus Bagge at the City of Borås explains that the municipality has only cut down on the supply, not on the amount of vegetables.
- When we reduce the range, we try to choose so that the most popular varieties remain, such as pizza salad or grated carrots, he says.
Hear what the fifth graders at Viskaforsskolan think about school food in the clip above.