1950s Oslo School Lunches

This morning an interesting post from Inspire Daily facebook post this morning popped up in my FB feed – telling how in 1927 a physician noticed the large numbers of tired looking, listless children were appearing in schools, and found that many of them had eaten no breakfast before coming to school – times were tough – the Great Depression was underway. Their attendance and academic performance overall was poor, and the doctor realised they were suffering from malnutrition. Due to his campaigning, the Norwegian government introduced free nutritious breakfasts for all Norwegian school children in 1932.

These were simple and served cold, but they were nutritionally well balanced with nutrients to foster physical growth and improved health. Called Oslo breakfasts, they consisted of a wholmeal bread roll, some cheese, vegetables, a piece of fruit and some milk, plus a spoonful of cod liver oil. Results were quite startling, as children began to show signs of growing taller than their average cohort had previously shown, and as academic performance levels increased, illness and absenteeism decreased.. By the late 30s and 40s the hugely successful program had been adopted by a number of other countries incuding Australia.

The appearance of that post in my feed this morning was an interesting coincidence (or was AI listening to our phone conversation? ) because just yesterday Ro and I had been talking about the difference in life expectancy between that of our parents’ generation, born around 1920, who expected to live into their 60s; and our own, the post WWII Boomers, born beginning in the late late 40s, who expect to live into our 80s – which I will reach this year.

Our family lived in Launceston, just a few doors up the street from the entrance to the school we all attended, Broadland House School, BHS. Naturally we went home for lunch most days, but once a week we were allowed to take homemade sandwiches (always mashed egg and chives, still my fav.) a piece of cake and some fruit for lunch at school (in addition to our usual play lunch for morning recess) Other girls who lived further away of course had to take a lunch box, and a handful of girls even had lunch in the boarders’ dining room, at considerable cost no doubt. I’m the eldest in the family, and when I was 8 or 9, the school Parents and Friends, P&F, trialled a new system – which I think was one day a week. On that day we could order what was called an Oslo lunch!!! I’m not sure but it might have been ordered the day before – but anyway on the day, we went into the assembly hall and collected a brown paper bag containing a some wholemeal bread with cheese, perhaps tomato and lettuce, and I think an apple. I don’t remember a drink but it was possibly choc milk. No codliver oil, though. But Mum was pretty diligent with the codliver oil when we were very little – Ro says we only had that revolting Scotts Emulsion administered to help us get through the winter colds and flu season, but I’m not sure it wasn’t occasionally dished out through the whole year 🙁 but anyway it’s also now available orange flavoured.

The lunch-making BHS mums welcomed the popular Olso lunches innovation, and I think that gave the P&F the green light to go ahead with the tuckshop plan, which probably started the following year, as it was only a short time that Oslo lunches were distributed in the school assembly hall.