The most expensive canteen service in Italy is awarded to Basilicata. A “sad” record that sees a monthly expense of 109 euros per family. This is the photograph taken by the VII Cittadinanzattiva survey on the rates of school canteens in the year 2023 – 2024. The survey conducted took as reference a family with an average income that pays the rate defined by its Municipality.
The sample family is made up of three people (two parents and a minor child), with a gross annual income of 44,200 euros with a corresponding ISEE of 19,900 euros. In calculating the annual fee for the school catering service, a frequency of 20 days per month was assumed for a total of 9 months, excluding any extra annual or monthly fees.
The shortage of refectories available in schools in Basilicata also aggravates the situation. This is confirmed by Cesare Pinto, operational director of Ladisa Ristorazione, who declares: «Children and young people from Basilicata very often find themselves forced to eat in the classrooms where they teach because the schools do not have refectories. This impacts above all on hygiene and health requirements which for obvious reasons cannot be respected. You certainly need to be more careful than when the meal is distributed in a suitable area.”
Lucania is therefore in pole position among the regions that have the fewest structures to host the canteen service.
According to the National Registry, 33.6%, i.e. one building in three, would be equipped with a school canteen. The existing canteens, however, are not distributed evenly across the country as in the southern regions just over one building in five has a school canteen. In particular, the percentage drops drastically in the case of Lucania with 1.20% of structures, around 162 for the whole region.
Returning to costs, on average an Italian family spends 84 euros per month for the canteen service of a child enrolled in nursery school and 85 euros per month for a child enrolled in primary school. This translates into an average cost per meal of 4.20 euros and 4.26 euros respectively. As already mentioned, the region with the highest average cost is Basilicata, where the average monthly expense is 109 euros. On the contrary, Sardinia confirms itself as the most convenient region, with an average monthly expense of 61 euros for nursery school and 65 euros for primary school.
A price disparity that brings many Lucanian families to their knees, forcing them to give up a service that on the one hand helps working parents and on the other, in addition to improving social skills, allows them to access healthy and balanced meals essential in the psycho-physical development of the child.
In this regard, the Guarantor for Children and Adolescents in its annual report to Parliament also underlined the need to intervene on inequalities in access to the canteen service, making it free for all children in poverty.
But at the same time the canteen represents a daily opportunity to improve the nutrition of minors living in families with economic difficulties. The new data on food deprivation, relating to 2021, reiterate what emerged from the 2019 data processed by Istat.
At the time, it was found that the regions with the highest share of minors who do not consume at least one protein meal a day were Sicily, in first place, followed by Basilicata and Campania. A sign of possible food poverty that the most recent indicators seem to confirm. Two in particular: the share of families who declare that in 2021 they have experienced economic difficulties such as to prevent them from purchasing the necessary food, a condition experienced in Italy by 4.9% of children under 16 in that year. And the share of people who did not consume at least one protein meal a day, because they could not afford it (2.5% of minors).
