These unused rooms are more and more being put to use as lunch rooms, giving the students a chance to see some different scenery once a day and helping them to relax a bit and enjoy their meals. The dishes used for meals are chosen by schools according to how light, tough, and inexpensive they are. These conditions have led many schools to choose aluminum bowls or dishes made of polypropylene or some other synthetic resin. But metal containers get too hot to hold when filled with soup, a fact that has made polycarbonate the most popular choice over the years. Recently new fears have cropped up concerning these plastic bowls, though, as research points to the possibility that heated dishes could secrete small amounts of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors.
Alternatives remain hard to come by, though.
Ceramic is one natural option, but these dishes are heavy, easily broken, and expensive. In response to this situation, one manufacturer has launched production of tough stainless steel dishes with a polypropylene layer cushioning the outside. As the dishes use no adhesive to hold the layers together, when the units get old they can be broken down into their separate materials and recycled. Discovering how to treat delicate materials is an important part of school lunch education as well. Back to Main Index Edited by Japan Echo Inc. based on domestic Japanese news sources.