With the start of the new school year, the country was greeted not only by the usual bustle of textbooks and school uniforms, but also by a new food system. About three million students in grades 1–11 of municipal schools, who study in person or mixed mode, were granted the right to a free hot breakfast or lunch. To achieve this, the 2023 food blocks were modernized, another 272 are being built right now, and the state has directed over 8 billion hryvnias—1 billion for dining hall repairs and 7.4 billion directly for food.
The figures look convincing. The reality in the dining halls is somewhat different.
Carrot That Took Social Media by Storm
In Chernivtsi, students of one lyceum were served a slice of casserole, a piece of bread, and a whole raw carrot for breakfast. A photo of such a serving quickly spread across social media, and the head of the Chernivtsi OVA, Ruslan Osypenko, publicly responded—calling child nutrition a topic where there is no place for cutting corners or a formal approach, and ordered an official inspection as well as unscheduled monitoring visits to the region’s schools.
The Chernivtsi education authority explained the scale: if previously 8–10 thousand children ate in school dining halls per day, now it’s over 26 thousand. They assured that the system is ready to be refined so that the food is both high‑quality and comfortable for children.
Inside View: School Principal on the Kitchen Process
The principal of a Lvov school, Volodymyr Perev, describes the mechanism as follows: the menu is approved centrally for the whole city and updated once a month—meaning the set of dishes cycles, and what children started with on September 1 will return to the plates in October. Whoever cooks the food is decided by a tender: the contractor who offers the best terms wins and is responsible for the menu and presentation.
According to the principal, the quality of food can be assessed no better or worse than what parents ate in school several decades ago.
The main problem is not the recipe, but that some dishes simply do not appeal to children. Buckwheat porridge or buckwheat is not eaten by every child, and pasta also faces resistance among some students—this food simply goes to waste.
Where exactly the unused food goes, the principal cannot say: this is handled by the winning tender contractor, and tomorrow the school will have a different menu, so reusing leftovers is impossible.
Perev sees a difference between age groups. In primary school, organized food makes sense—small children are easier to involve in shared meals. In higher grades, he believes it is more appropriate to give students freedom of choice—the ability to buy what they will actually eat, rather than spending budget funds on dishes that end up in the trash.
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Inequality Between Communities
Founder of the public organization “Parents SOS,” Olena Parfyonova, describes a broader picture—and it is less comforting than ministry figures. Parents almost unanimously support the idea of free food, she says, but the problem lies in implementation, which dramatically differs from community to community.
The state allocates 50–60 hryvnia per child for a hot lunch or breakfast—according to Parfyonova, this sum is clearly insufficient for a quality dish. The difference can be covered by the communities themselves if they have the resources. Wealthier municipalities top up from their own budgets, and there parents are generally satisfied and grateful for the food. Communities with limited subsidies lack this possibility—and that is where photos of Chernivtsi’s carrot come from.
Parfyonova calls this systemic inequality: formally guaranteed food turns out to be entirely different depending on the region where a child lives. In her view, the solution lies not only in on‑site control but also in the state assessing each community’s capacity separately and specifically supporting those that cannot manage financially.
Another of her points concerns waste. During the previous introduction of free food for primary school, Parfyonova personally saw plates of food standing in the morning in dining halls, and within twenty minutes of the break they were taken untouched and thrown away. She fears that now the story will repeat on a larger scale—simply because older students eat school food far less eagerly than younger ones.
Her proposal is to develop, together with the Ministry of Health, an alternative food format for those age groups that refuse hot meals: snacks such as cookies, juice, apples, or bananas—what the child will actually eat, not what they will throw away.
Air‑Raid Warnings as a Factor in School Menus
A separate problem raised by Parfyonova is the logistics of food during air‑raid warnings. Preparing hot breakfasts or lunches requires chefs to start early in the morning, and a warning can halt the process for several hours. Preparations interrupted mid‑cooking are often simply discarded after the warning ends. In some regions—e.g., Odessa—schools are forced to rely on what they managed to prepare before the power cut or the warning announcement.
Parfyonova believes that food regulations should be more flexible and take into account the real conditions of wartime. Instead of a rigid requirement to prepare hot dishes daily, she proposes considering a dry ration for children who spend part of the day in shelters—a solution that does not depend on electricity or kitchen time.
Who Is Responsible When Something Goes Wrong
Quality control of food is formally placed on the school director and the State Consumer Service, which approves the recipe book of dishes allowed for children and the menu itself. At the same time, Parfyonova notes that parents have the full right to demand access to information: photos of dishes, approved menus, arrange visits to the dining hall, and personally assess the conditions under which children eat. According to her, this right should be used more actively, as parental on‑site control can quickly identify a problem before it becomes the next social media scandal.
What Parents Say, Who Have Already Eaten
Not all feedback is negative. Mother of student Anastasia Obrazcova shares her experience plainly, but with visible relief.
When she first heard about free lunches, she was tense—not because of concerns about quality, but because her daughter always rushed and didn’t have time to eat properly in the dining hall. After the first lunch, the child wrote that everything turned out quite good, and there was enough time for the meal.
The only minus the picky‑eating girl found was corn porridge, and she expected to see mashed potatoes, but instead received a non‑potato dish. However, the main value of the reform for the Obrazcova family is not culinary: now the mother no longer has to gather a snack for her child in the morning, and instead of rushing, she can calmly have breakfast together in the fifteen minutes left between waking up and leaving for school.
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