School canteens, Parma second in Italy for quality

It is the Municipality of Sesto Fiorentino, in Tuscany, that has made the highest leap, going from fifth to last place in 2017 to first in the school canteen rankings. Second, on equal merit, are Parma and Fano, while Cremona remains the best service in terms of gastronomic skill of the chefs. Signs of recovery in the South, in particular Bari and Brindisi and especially Syracuse, which achieved 57 points more than last year. This is what Foodinsider’s 9th Rating of school menus reveals.
«At the top of the ranking – explained the president of Foodinsider, Claudia Paltrinieri – there is the menu that has best been able to interpret nutrition as a tool for health, respect for the environment and promotion of the territory. From the extra virgin olive oil coming from the olive groves of Sesto Fiorentino, Calenzano, Signa, Carmignano, to the trout from Lunigiana, to the gray mullet from the Orbetello lagoon, to the fresh pasta from Mugello – he added – these are just some of the short supply chain products which occupy 73% of the foods on the menu in Sesto Fiorentino, where plastic is banned, as are processed dishes”.

The Report confirmed the North as the area with the highest number of high quality canteens, with 37% of Municipalities in the excellence range, compared to 28% in the Center and 11% in the South; an unequal comparison, however, the Report points out, given the small number of canteens in the South, full-time working is not very widespread, and the few that exist do not have a long tradition like in the North. At a regional level, Lombardy and Marche are confirmed with the highest percentage of high quality canteens – respectively with Cremona, Bergamo, Monza and Mantua, Fano, Ancona, Jesi and Macerata – in the Center and in the South the canteens that have done the most Frosinone, Siracusa and Rieti are a big improvement, with a leap that goes beyond doubling last year’s score. In the last places in the ranking which analyzes 60 canteens, in order, according to the analysis by Foodinsider which every year monitors the state of the service on a representative sample of about a third of Italian canteens, «there are Pescara, Viterbo, Pisa, Alessandria , Potenza, Cagliari, Grosseto, Prato, Reggio Calabria, Novara and L’Aquila”. (HANDLE).