School Milk Banned “For Destroying Japanese Culture”

A Japanese city has abolished school milk for polluting the glorious culinary culture of Japan, saying it “destroys Japanese culinary culture” and “doesn’t go well with rice.”

The mayor of the Niigata prefecture city of Sanjo acted in response to complaints from parents and schools that “milk and rice don’t go together well,” saying that milk pollutes young minds into accepting a non-Japanese diet:

“Do you ordinarily drink milk when eating a Japanese style meal? You don’t drink it then, do you?

School lunches are dietary education. It is very important use the culture of a meal provided as a school lunch to make children understand this.”

After the completion of a three month trial, from April onward provision of milk with school meals has been completely abolished in the city. There is no official comment as to what nutritional considerations were involved in the decision.

Coincidentally, Sanjo also happens to be a major rice producer and shifted all elementary and middle schools to rice-based meals 6 years ago.

Some locals are baffled by the decision, with a housewife quoted as raising the most obvious objection that “Milk is necessary – it is hardly a problem to eat it with Japanese food” and even a sushi restaurateur comments that “What is wrong with milk? It is for the health of the children…”

The increasing influence of western dietary norms and scientific nutrition are widely credited with being responsible for the dramatic increases in height (and even cup size) enjoyed by the Japanese population in the post-war period, although it apparently seems protecting the purity of Japanese cuisine from barbarian influences is a rather more popular cause than ensuring adequate calcium intake in infants among some circles in Japan:

“They should have done this 20 years ago!”

“Only now do they realise this?”

“Milk was just to correct post-war nutritional problems, it is no longer necessary.”

“Milk doesn’t go with white rice!”

“What the hell has whether it goes with rice got to do with this? You want to turn us back into a nation of hobbits?”

“What about all those stumpy little Niigatan kids…”

“Of course, no problem at all if Japanese all go back to their tiny pre-war sizes!”

“I don’t even see what all the fuss is about, I drink it whilst eating my ramen.”

“The meal should be able to provide enough nutrition so who needs milk.”

“Only after decades of universal school milk do these idiots realise it is destroying our culinary culture?!”

“With only Japanese meals provided the issue is whether they are providing adequate calcium… if so then it doesn’t seem to matter.”

“A lot of whinging from people who don’t like milk – yet with anything else they would be attacking people for being too picky.”

“It is not really clear what level of ‘washoku’ they are actually providing to kids here – it could easily be very poor fare.”

“Bizarre that they drum eating everything on your plate and not leaving things just because you don’t like them into you yet but then abolish milk because it doesn’t go well with rice…”

“You’d think 60 years of massive milk consumption would have made it part of Japanese culinary culture.”

“It is probably just a way of cutting costs.”

“Niigata is full of rice farmers so it is not really surprising they got this passed. National abolition would probably have dire effects on dairy farmers though.”

“Just a bunch of moneyed interests sacrificing the health of children to their profits.”

“GHQ implemented the policy and it stuck through inertia, no wonder all you crazy rightists want to get rid of it.”

“Let them drink tea!”