it is a nutritional and pedagogical project that has the aim of serving healthier menus, as well as educating students in healthy and responsible eating habits.
Juan de Lanuza School counts with its own kitchen in the centre, which allows for a greater quality and freshness in the dishes, and with a Quality and Improvement Committee formed by teachers, parents and kitchen staff that continuously plans and supervises the centre’s nourishment program as well as educative activities related to it.
The school offers menus that give priority to ecological products and ingredients of proximity, that is, those produced in the nearby area. This enables us to have fresher products of a better quality; while at the same time diminishing the environmental impact, consequence of their transport, and supporting producers of the surrounding rural areas. The project counts with the assessment of Mensa Civica, a European initiative that promotes a collective, sustainable food industry.
Hence, in the school’s programmed menus we find at least one or two sustainable courses in each meal, that is, elaborated with ecological and/or proximity products. The fundamental basis of this project relies on the choice of food, as a result of which the centre’s menus are elaborated with products such as olive oil from the Bajo Aragón, season fruit from different places of the Autonomous Community, vegetables from the Ribera del Ebro, ecological pasta from the field of Belchite or eggs from Montañana. These products are included in all of the centre’s menus, for Pre-School, Primary, Secondary and Baccalaureate, as well as in the staff menus.
At the same time, Juan de Lanuza School has started the process to obtain the collective and sustainable food industry quality label in the Slow Food movement, being the first school in Aragón to do so. It is similar to the “Kilometre 0” certificate, which distinguishes restaurants nowadays.
Following the Slow Food general objectives, this certification promotes an increased percentage of proximity and ecological products in the menus, whilst raising awareness on ecological agriculture through different foods and encouraging healthy and conscious eating habits.
