The present paper is intended to analyse religious diversity in public spaces, by focusing on a specific issue, the school canteen service, in primary schools. This research, A Table avec les Religions[1] started in 2013, promoted by the Foundation Benvenuti in Italia (Turin), in collaboration with the Risteco Consortium  (Chambery) and the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l’Homme (Lausanne). The research question was related to the differences in diet and eating habits among children attending Italian schools (in Turin and Rome) and coming from foreign countries, and to define how public institutions such as primary schools and their canteen services can consider the religious and traditional beliefs regarding nutrition. More precisely, if the school canteen service is intended to be offered to a specific consumer base, what happens when such consumer base becomes more diverse and plural?

Is the Italian school canteen service able to take into account each one of the religious dietary need of its users?

Considered that schools provide a fundamental opportunity for the promotion of healthy lifestyles, by encouraging the implementation of a coherent set of integrated actions, involving both public and private actors, improved nutrition should be one of the priorities on every school’s agenda because of its positive effect on children’s wellbeing. It is a known fact that links between food practices, learning ability and school performance are very strong. Moreover, the food consumption in school canteens represents an important moment for building social cohesion; the school meal is a tool for social and cultural inclusion. By and large, the public school system is still tailored in prevalence to Catholic religion, festivities, habits, precepts. To give an example, no school canteen is allowed in serving meat on Fridays. Moreover, the case of the crucifix may help to show how not secularized practices and politics have missed, until now, the opportunity to deal with pluralism (Ventura 2014).

A III millennium Italy can no longer ignore the history of those religions, – the many Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, the oriental traditions – (Filoramo, Pajer 2012), which have contributed to forging its identity during the centuries and which animate a present day characterized by pluralism and by continuous exchange and mobility (Pace 2010). In 2013, people belonging to religious communities, different from Catholics (Caritas-Migrantes 2013; Cesnur 2013; Melloni 2014), were between 4.343.000 and 6.428.307 (7-10,5% of the population: among them 26% Italian citizens and 74% non Italian citizens): Muslims (1.500.000) orthodox (1.400.000), evangelicals (650.000), Jehovah’s witnesses (400.000), Hinduist (135.000), followed by protestants, Jewish, Sikh, Mormons e Baha’i (below 60.000 units).

The principle of “laicité positive” in Italy (Giorda 2009), as applied to the case of the school canteen service, can be intended as knowledge of the religious phenomenon and of religions in general, in the respect of differences and faiths (or non-faiths), in personal (non) religious beliefs. In this sense, the places of meeting, exchange, education, firstly schools, are a multi- and inter-cultural laboratory, which should spearhead all new challenges for creating processes for peaceful interaction and cohabitation among cultures, including religious cultures.

1.The school canteen service in Italy

The development of nutrition policies and food practices is one of the aims of the Italian public policies.  According to collected data, in order to encourage educational and health institutions to coordinate their efforts in promoting health through nutrition, the Italian Deaprtment of Health[2] is promoting a monitoring system, OKkio alla Salute. This is the result of a collaboration between the Italian National Government, the Minister of Health, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, CNESPS Centro Nazionale di Epidemiologia, Sorveglianza e Promozione della Salute, all the Italian Regional Authorities in matters of Education and Public Policy, and Italian schools.

In 2012, this survey, which takes place every two years, examined a cross-section of 2,622 classes, a total of 46,483 children (6-10 years of age) and 48,668 parents, residing in every Italian Region. It highlighted that 10,6% of children are overweight, something that is more evident in Central and Southern Italy[3]. The summarising document of the report clearly demonstrated some bad habits in children and families that might cause obesity and malnutrition. As much research has demonstrated, these habits include not having breakfast (9%), or having a not healthy breakfast (31%) frequent consumption of sugary drinks (44%), and the habit of not eating vegetables and fruit (22%).

The survey showed how education and school are fundamental in terms of learning nutritional practices, and in providing evidence-based data and policies, as the graph below shows:

Nutritionists and the dieticians of the municipality of Turin, have highlighted during the interviews, the survey OKkio alla Salute is not able to consider every single Italian municipality since it solely defines national average trends.

In conclusion, even if collected data is fundamental for every single municipality in Italy, each Regional Authority needs to define their own strategy regarding nutrition and education, in order to enhance their own situation for the municipality.

Each Government-approved policy on nutrition and food safety – oriented towards both the reduction of the incidence of food borne disease and the respect of ethical and religious considerations in matters of nutrition – depends directly on regional, provincial and local Italian officials.

Although a survey conducted by Slow Food[4] and including 50 Italian schools showed how 79% of the schools offer the possibility for each family to choose from menus built with reference to medical or ethical and religious considerations, there are several cases in which schools refuse to offer this service[5].

In Turin and Rome – and in Italy, as in Europe – the aim of supporting healthy nutritional practices is directly addressed to schools, with reference to a scientific, integrated and holistic method.

Comprehensive approaches are fundamental, in order to consider every child in terms of physical, mental, emotional and cultural dimensions. However, collected data clearly shows how this multidisciplinary approach is incomplete, since it never considers religious dimensions of children and their families.

As already specified, we consider the religious dimension to be as important as others in matters of food and nutrition. Socio-economic development might represent progress in every aspect of human life. Human nutrition is the result of a number of influences brought about by different factors and activities, those which do not have direct implications on food and nourishment are involved in an indirect way; indirect influences in any case contribute to our nutrition in some way. In this respect, religious influences in food matters may deserve further attention, in order to promote the holistic approach concerning nutritional practices within schools.

Considering that well-balanced, nutritious food is fundamental at all ages and stages of life and considering that a child’s eating habits are established and defined early in life, influenced by education (with references to both school and culture) and family, childhood certainly represents the time in which to teach the enjoyment of a variety of nutritious foods.

2.Research methodology

The research was conducted in Turin and Rome, two big cities in the north and in the centre of Italy, the first and the current capital city of the country.

The management of the canteen service in Rome was particularly interesting between 2002 and 2008, which has been called the “the food revolution at school”. In those years, the municipality decided to invest in the quality of school meals, promoting a participatory process that involved not only institutions and companies, but also families and the children that use the service, working with sustainability, and organic and fair-trade products[6]. The aim of the project was to combine cultural, social and economic needs and demands, and connect these with the quality and the healthiness of food. In this period, different methods were promoted by local authorities in order to improve the quality of service. The related project promoted by Prof. A. Morrone, Medical Director of the AO San Camillo Forlanini, in collaboration with Paola Scardella, UOC executive of the National Health Promotion at INMP and Laura Piombo, a biologist and researcher, brought about the publication of a Handbook of Transcultural Nutrition.

The increasing and continuous presence of migrants has prompted health care administration to support a research project to promote the culture of diversity. Considering the importance of dietary differences in the process of adaptation to a new culture and new context of belonging, the Handbook of Transcultural Nutrition (Manuale di alimentazione transculturale[7]) can be considered as a useful tool to analyse the discussed issue.

Nowadays, in Rome, the school canteen service offers a menu articulated onto nine weeks; it is a seasonal menu changing each term and offers a range of nutritious choices (with reference to fruit and vegetables seasonality) in order to increase an awareness of sensible eating and to maintain healthy lifestyles. Moreover, the menu is prepared with the aim to meet specifications for the content of meals with reference to nursery, primary and secondary school meal needs.

For any other meal options, the request should be compiled by the family doctor using indication contained in Model I (food allergies or intolerances) and Model L (food irregularities or chronic pathologies); this request should be sent to the canteen manager. Even if there is no  form for meal regime change for religious reasons, it is possible to discuss this possibility with the canteen nutritionists[8].

In Turin and in Rome it is possible to ask for special menus, which are available both for medical reasons and ethical (religious or cultural) ones: forms to be completed are available on the website of the School Canteen Service of the Municipality[9]. These are composed of:

-Form for an alternative menu (to specify if for medical or ethical reasons);

-Form for a temporary diet because of a food allergy or intolerance;

-Form for a verified food allergy;

-Form for a verified food intolerance.

Specific documentation is needed for menus related to medical issues.

Data was collected through different methods and then compared:

-Theoretical analysis of the relationship between food and cultural and religious identities among religious groups mainly represented within the surveyed cities;

-Analysing nutritional, economic and environmental issues concerning food distributed in school canteen services (local foods and the environmental impact of their consumption);

-Analysing good practices developed in school canteen services regarding religious pluralism and nutrition;

-Analysing surveys concerning religious needs, involving parents of children who attend selected schools in Turin and Rome

-Charting a map of the religious needs of children attending primary schools;

The project involved:

-6 primary schools;
-2,012 students;
-848 families.

The surveys aimed to collect data regarding:

-significance of religious and cultural pluralism in schools
-children’s and families’ personal data;
-religious dietary laws within selected families;
-perception of religious pluralism in school canteen service.

As the city of Turin and Rome show a multicultural and intercultural nature, the questionnaire was translated into Arabic, French, English, Spanish, Chinese and Romanian.

Response rate is a crucial factor in evaluating the reliability of survey results; in Turin the response rate was almost 38% (from a total amount of 1.374 selected families); in Rome the response rate was almost 51% (from 546 surveyed families).

Overall, the survey involved the school staff of 5 schools based in different zones of the two cities, with different peculiarities as far as concerns numbers of foreign children and, as a consequences, of special ethical/religious diets: the Gabelli, Santorre di Santarosa and Tommaseo schools (Turin), the Pisacane and Di Donato schools (Rome) and involved a total number of 519 families from Turin, 279 from Rome.

Significance of religious pluralism

Data concerning citizenship[10] is shown in Graph 1(see attached document), by percentage. The selected schools represent three differing case studies where 59% of children attending schools are Italian citizens and 41% are not.

With reference to nationalities, Graph 2 shows that in Turin the most common foreign nationality is Moroccan,  followed by Romanian, Nigerian, Chinese, Egyptian, Albanian and Philippine. There are more than 29 other nationalities which represent less than 1%.

Overall, there are 38 nationalities to consider.

Graph 3 shows how a great number of the children with foreign nationalities were born in Italy (87,2%), with a small percentage of children born in Romania (4,7%) and Morocco (1,8%). 20 nations are represented.

Graph 4 represents the much more complex situation of the parents. About half of them were born in Italy (54,7%), while 14,8% were born in Romania and 11,8% in Morocco. 35 nations are represented.

Graph 5 compares percentages of parents and children born abroad: the clear discrepancy between the two tables highlights the increasing phenomenon of the second generation, a term which refers to children of first-generation immigrants and represents 29% of the surveyed cross-section.

Graph 6 is concerned with the frequency of mixed marriages, with references to those families whose parents come from different countries. This phenomenon makes up 12% of the cross-section, 1,5% of cases are represented by families whose parents both come from different countries, while in 10,5% of the cases, one parent was born in Italy.

Considered results refer to Istat (National Statistic data) from 2012 concerning mixed marriage, as represented in the next graph[11], where mixed marriages represented 13% of total marriages in Italy and 16% of the total in North-Western Italy.

Gathered information allowed us to collect data concerning the composition of families, since there are no available databases in Turin. Data concerning religious belonging (shown in Graph 7) clearly reveals the multicultural nature of the selected cross-section, where about 55% of selected families declare themselves to be Catholic, 16%, Muslim, and 14% Orthodox. About 10% declare themselves to be non believers, 4% Protestant and an insubstantial percentage are Buddhist, Jehova’s Witness or follow the Baha’ì religious tradition.

With reference to mixed marriages where both the parents declare themselves to belong to a religious tradition (4,2% of the total amount of the selected couples and 4,7% of the total amount of the selected religious couples) Graph 8 reveals the main religious communities represented in Turin. Mixed couples composed of Catholic-Orthodox seem to prevail (2,2%), followed by Catholic-Muslim, Catholic-protestant (0,9%) and Catholic-Buddhist (0,2%) couples.

Food habits and food rules
The second set of questions aimed to collect data concerning:

-The existence of religious and cultural dietary laws;
-Their perceived importance;
-The need to respect these rules;
-Opinions regarding the elimination of meat and fish from school canteen menus.

With reference to the existence of religious dietary laws, Graph 9 reveals how 28% of the surveyed families need to observe dietary requirements based on their religious beliefs, while 1,3% does not know about such rules. Moreover, 24,6% of the cross-section said that they also observe various religious food restrictions at home.

Graph 10 is concerned with religious dietary rules. The cross-section was built with reference to those who declared themselves to be observant; non believers and religious minorities are not represented in the graph. According to the collected data, 40% of the surveyed Muslims belong to a religious tradition which imposes various food rules. Regarding Catholicism, gathered data seem to be significant. Catholicism tends to represent a religion without a precise dietary system. As discussed in the previous pages, some foods may be prohibited during certain religious periods, but there are not forbidden foods. Even though these rules are scarce and limited, a minority of the surveyed Catholics declared that they respect them. According to these considerations, 21% of Catholics respect religious dietary laws, as do 26% of Orthodox, 19% of Protestant and 41% of the Muslims surveyed. Muslims and Orthodox respondents in particular followed the rules even at home, and were followed by Catholics and Protestants.

The following graphs show the level of importance conferred to the respect of religious dietary rules.

Graph 11 presents the results concerning school and home contexts. Although 63% of the surveyed families did not consider it important to respect religious food rules at home, 16% of the cross-section considered it important, and 21% as very important; overall 37% of the surveyed families considers their religious dietary system as a set of rules which deserves to be respected.

Regarding the school context, the conferred importance of respecting religious food rules clearly decreases; 13,5% consider it as important even if not fundamental, 17,6% as fundamental. Together, they represent about 31% of the cross-section.

It is possible to state that perhaps schools cannot design menus able to take into account ethnicity, language, culture, and/or religious conditions of its students. In fact, from home to school contexts, the conferred importance of the respect for religious food rules decreases both among those who consider it as very important (-3,7%) and among those who consider it as important but not fundamental (-2,5%).

Through appropriate qualitative methods, it would be useful to verify if the school is able to offer religiously correct menus, or it just creates a kind of cultural submission which limits the capacity for the children to maintain their religious and cultural observance.

Most of the religious restrictions are concerned with the consumption of meat. For this reason, they frequently represent an obstacle within the communion of the school meal. Regarding fish, although a copious number of dietary systems do not prohibit the consumption of fish, and even if fish is too expensive for a school meal, it may represent a problem for ethical and philosophical trends such as veganism and vegetarianism. On the other hand, it may represent a valid replacement for meat. Graph 12 represents the results regarding the favourable, indifferent, and unfavourable opinions concerning the possible elimination of meat from school menus. The percentage of families against the elimination of fish from the menu is high (+20%): it therefore seems to be easier to give up the consumption of fish than meat. An important result shown in the graph is concerned with the possibility of excluding meat. If fish continued to be offered in the menu, the majority of the surveyed families would agree with (or be indifferent to) the suggestion of removing meat from the menu.

Graph 12.1 compares positive and indifferent reactions to the possibility of excluding meat from the menu to negative responses: in Turin, 65% of surveyed families would be in favour or indifferent towards giving up meat at school.

Families answering “no” regarding the exclusion of meat from the school meal were encouraged to give reasons for their answer. The semantic analysis of what they stated is showed in graph 13, where 35,4% of those interviewed seemed to be worried about the balanced nature of meals. This is followed by 19% of surveyed families who chose not to give reasons. Most of the remaining answers are concerned with the idea that not everybody likes fish, that children are supposed to try all kinds of food, and concerns related to the quality of fish that would be offered.

Comparing collected data with the religious beliefs of the cross section, it is possible to define a map of the collected opinions. As shown in Graph 14, most of the negative answers regarding the removal of meat were given by Protestants and Catholics (about 57% and 48%) while Muslims, Orthodox and non believers gave a higher percentage of positive answers.

Graph 15 represents the desirability of different foods, as expressed by surveyed families.

Graph 16 shows the perceptions concerning foods and their perceived link to particular religious or gastronomic traditions.

Perceived religious and cultural pluralism within school canteen service

The last part of the questionnaire concerns the perceived level of religious and cultural pluralism within the school context. It should be stated that the low level of perception might be related to the absence of this issue in home conversations. With the aim to evaluate cultural and religious pluralism in schools with reference to school canteen service, the last part of the questionnaire contains some questions related to:

-Knowledge of special meals required by children;
-Knowledge of number of special meals provided for religious reasons;
-Awareness of children asking for special meals for religious reasons;
-Knowledge of the school canteen service and of the possibilities for special and religious menus;
-Opinion concerning special meals.

The possibility to answer “I do not know” was created with the aim to indicate a lack of information or knowledge about religious pluralism on the part of the surveyed families.

Graph 17 shows the “I do not know” answers.

It was considered useful to collect data concerning possible factors involved in choosing the answer “I do not know”, such as the importance given to the need to respect religious dietary laws. The idea that will be shown is the following: the more families know about the concept, the higher their level of involvement will be.

Graph 18 represents the comparison between “I do not know” answers and the importance given to the need for a religiously correct menu. Since the absence of opinions regarding the issue is high, it may be stated that the percentage of families who perceive themselves as not being involved in the problem is elevated. As shown, these values significantly increase when the issue is concerned with the respect for religious dietary systems.

4. ROME

Table 2[12] displays data concerning the foreign primary school population with reference to the chosen districts (municipalities).

Map 2 clearly represents the size of the selected municipalities; the highlighted numbers show the schools in relation to the districts.

Relevance of pluralism

In the Rome case study, schools were not able to provide data on the nationality of their children, because the two institutions with whom we collaborated do not hold statistics on the matter. This lack of information is significant, especially considering the demographic characteristics of the neighbourhoods: a high percentage of foreign residents would suggest a greater awareness of the subject, given the more pronounced needs of students. These considerations are also supported by the results of the survey: more than 20% of the students included were born abroad (Graph 19). Among the most represented foreign countries are the Philippines (6.3%), Bangladesh (5.9% ), Egypt and Peru (1.1% each), followed by 13 other countries (5.9% in total), for a total of 17 foreign countries represented.

As in the case study of Turin, in Rome the percentages of the place of birth of parents and children vary considerably: 52.4% of parents were born in a country other than Italy (Graph 20), among which Bangladesh (15.7%) and the Philippines (13.7%), followed by China, Egypt and Peru (2.9% each), Romania (2.1%), Morocco (1.2% ) and Ukraine (1%), followed by 27 other States with percentages lower than 1%, for a total of 35 foreign countries represented.

The gap between the data on the places of birth of parents and children expresses, as in Turin, the importance of the phenomenon of the second generation: 30% of the Roman pupils were born in Italy to foreign-born parents (Graph 21). It is important to mention that the Roman sample is composed of two schools instead of the three in Turin, as it was not possible to include an institute in the neighbourhood with the lowest percentage of foreign population. It is possible to assume that the incidence of second generations in Rome (30%) would be lower than in Turin (29%).

The data on mixed parental couples differs considerably from that on mixed marriages reported in Melloni (2014): our sample has lower values, comprehending 8.3% of mixed couples (compared to 18% of mixed marriages in Central Italy), of which 5.7% of couples are formed of one person born in Italy and the other born abroad (11,2% in the case of mixed marriages) and 2.6% of couples are formed of two foreign-born people (compared with 6.8% of marriages).

With regards to religious diversity (Graph 23), 38.7% of families declared themselves Catholic, 21.5% Muslim, 4.3% Orthodox, 2.9% Buddhist; followed by 1,4% of families saying they belong respectively to Protestantism or to the Church of Christ, 1,1% Hindu or Jehovah’s Witness; 0.4%, of Baha’i faith or Candomblé; while 26.9% of families are non-believers.

Religiously mixed couples make up 1, 2% of the total and the 1,7% of the believers: figures which are ​​significantly lower than those in Turin, where 4.7% of the believer couples were religiously mixed. Moreover, while in Turin, religious diversity is more composite, involving five different faiths (Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Orthodoxy and Protestantism), in Rome the registered variety is reduced, involving only Catholicism and Islam.

Cultural habits and dietary restrictions

Considering the issues related to the habits and dietary restrictions of families and students, a matter of primary importance concerns dietary rules of a religious nature (Graph 24): 40.3% of families stated the presence of such rules in their religious doctrine (compared to 27.8% in Turin). Among these, 83,5% claimed they applied them at home: 83.3% of Muslims and 21.3% of Catholics (Graph 25)[13].

Like in Turin, there is a difference regarding the importance given to respect of food restrictions imposed by religion at home and at school: the number of families that do not consider respect for the doctrine important decreases by 3% from home to school (this was 6.2% in Turin). Nevertheless, 38% of believer families consider it important for children to eat school food in accordance with their faith, while 11,5% consider it important, but not entirely necessary.

Roman results about the exclusion of meat and fish from school menus (Graphs 27 and 28) are surprisingly similar to the data collected in Turin: 35,7% of families are against the exclusion of meat from menus, while 25.3% are indifferent and 39% are fully in favour. The last two values, added together, constitute 64.3% of families who are not against excluding meat from the school menu (compared to 64.6 % in Turin). 56% of Roman families are against the eventual exclusion of both meat and fish, compared to 25.2% who are indifferent and 18.7% who are in favour. The percentage of families in favour of offering a vegetarian menu is 43.9% (44.6% in Turin).

Despite many families being in favour, what are the reasons given against the exclusion of meat and fish from school menus? In the case of meat (Graph 29) like in the case of both meat and fish (Graph 30), the most common objection is that, deprived of such food, the menu would not be balanced and appropriate to children’s growth: this answer was given by approximately 57.5% of respondents in the case of meat, and 58.5% in the case of the exclusion of both meat and fish. Other objections concern the preferences of children (11.2% argue that many children do not like fish) and the intrinsic value of food variety, represented by the possibility for children to taste as many foods as possible (10,1% in the case of the exclusion of meat, 10.2% in the case of both meat and fish). Finally, the difficulty in finding a replacement for protein worries 5.4 % of families.

Given this data, what is the influence of religion on the beliefs of families regarding meat and fish?

As suggested by graphs 31 and 32, the most numerous families are Protestants, Catholics (respectively 44% and 53%) and nonbelievers (44% and 72%). Among those clearly in favour, Muslims represent 66% (less in case of the exclusion of both meat and fish: 24%).

Graph 33 represents a ranking of the average desirability of different foods in the school canteen, as expressed by the families involved. Graph 34 illustrates the perception of the degree of affinity towards the same food in gastronomic religious traditions. These results regard only believer families, divided by faith; the report presents only data related to Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox families, in order to facilitate comparison with Turin.

The perception of religious pluralism at school

Also in this Roman case study, our team has verified the frequency of “I do not know” answers in the five questions about the perception of religious pluralism in the children’s class (Graph 35). The results present once again a high percentage of families who state their ignorance on the subject. Although the percentages of those ignorant on the subject are significantly lower than those in Turin, lack of knowledge and opinion about issues related to cultural and religious pluralism in the school context concerns about 35% of Roman families (50% in Turin).How does the involvement of families in the canteen influence their perception of pluralism in the school environment of their children? In Turin this relationship appeared solid, with a distribution of “I do not know” answers concentrated among those less affected or not affected at all by the problem of religiously correct food. The Roman case is more complex: in 54.4% of the families (75% in Turin) the lack of knowledge is connected to families with little involvement; in 14.3% (12.7% in Turin) families with an average involvement, while in 31.3% (12.1% in Turin) of families really interested in the topic.

Conclusion

School can provide a significant opportunity for the promotion of wellbeing, in terms of nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, and education. School canteen service clearly represents an important arena in which to face these issues.

Kevin Morgan e Roberta Sonnino declare that “At a first glance, the aim to serve in schools healthy and locally produced food seems to be easy to realize; but it is not, in various European countries, easy to do”[14]. The problem in the Italian areas seems not to be related to the inadequacy of school canteen service; each municipality plays an active role in offering healthy foods in school meals. The problem may concern limits regarding social, environmental and cultural sustainability and quality in terms of food in schools. The issue may be linked to the concepts of social inclusion and exclusion, generated by the educational system and the food practices within schools.

As for menus, we need to understand if special menus are inclusive or not and why; as we know, the enormous number of special menus led to a fragmentation of food practices and sometimes to a ghettoization of children asking for it. On the other hand, the standardization of menus may be a solution, too.

Beyond the protection of both food practices and cultural and religious pluralism, is there any possibility to proceed through the building of an innovative menu? Certainly, if we consider food practices as a set of knowledge concerning products and their preparation which exists in different areas of the world, school meals might be conceived with reference to the synergy of differing traditions, cultures and religions, depending on the individual[15].

Considering this, school may provide a model for positively influencing children’s eating habits, through hands-on education about nutrition, and through community involvement. Overall, even if numerous initiatives have been undertaken to enhance school canteen service with emphasis on social inclusion and cohesion, much more still needs to be done. Workshops able to deal with children’s and school staff’s education concerning foods and food practices represent one such initiative. Learning to benefit from supporting religious and cultural diversity as a fundamental value within society seems a good starting point.

Religious and inter-religious issues are considered to be quite irrelevant to the future of Italy. However, especially in last 3 decades Italian society has become increasingly diverse mainly due to unprecedented inflows of immigrant population, which diversified the spectrum of religious beliefs in the public space and the request of freedom of worship. Surely, this consideration does not deny or underrate other forms of diversity already present in Italian society from the beginning, including presence of important religious and linguistic minorities; thus,it is true that religious diversity has become a central aspect of the public and political discourse with the presence of immigrants, also in school canteens. Overall, this issue might be approached through the building much more homogeneous and inclusive menus, in order to deal with the changing food identity of the students using the canteen.

More inclusivity may move from a re-thinking of the served meat quantity in school meals. According to gathered data, the meat issue represents the most important problem in building menus, both for cultural and religious reasons, and its exclusion does not mean a problem for the majority of the surveyed families. The school meal represents a third of daily meals, and a quarter of weekly meals.

Notes

[1]A table avec les religions explores differences in diet and eating habits among children attending European schools; more precisely the project involves Albanian, English, French, Romanian and Swiss, schools. A first report of the project is available at M. Giorda, L. Bossi, E. Messina, A tavola con le religioni (nella ristorazione collettiva), OLIR Osservatorio della Libertà e delle Istituzioni Religiose, http://www.olir.it/areetematiche/334/documents/report_ita_definitivo_2014.pdf.

[2]Department of Health http://www.salute.gov.it/25/03/2015.

[3]Department of Health, http://www.epicentro.iss.it/okkioallasalute/pdf/OKkio%20alla%20SALUTE%20sintesi%202012_finale.pdf, 25/03/2015.

[4]N. Fiorita, Le istituzioni e la lotta alla discriminazione, dagli atti del convegno Ambiti e forme della discriminazione: approcci teorici, casi concreti e politiche pubbliche di contrasto, Bologna, 3 febbraio 2010: http://formazionelavoro.regione.emilia-romagna.it/labdi/temi/materiali/secondo-ciclo-di-seminari-2009-2010/ambiti-e-forme-della-discriminazione-approcci-teorici-casi-concreti-e-politiche-pubbliche-di-contrasto

[5]Ibidem and M. Giorda, L. Bossi, E. Messina, A tavola con le religioni (nella ristorazione collettiva), OLIR Osservatorio della Libertà e delle Istituzioni Religiose, http://www.olir.it/areetematiche/334/documents/report_ita_definitivo_2014.pdf.

[6]K. Morgan, R.Sonnino, The School Food devolution. Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development, Earthscan, London and Washington, DC 2008.

[7]A. Morrone, P. Scardella, L. Piombo, in collaboration with National Institute for Health Migration and Poverty (NIHMP), Manuale di alimentazione transculturale, Editeam, Cento (Fe) 2010.

[8] http://www.comune.roma.it/wps/portal/pcr?jppagecode=mense_dses.wp, 18/08/2014.

[9]http://www.comune.torino.it/servizieducativi/ristorazionescolastica/, 18/08/2014.

[10]Statistical data concerning selected school student citizenship was obtained through the analysis of the data supplied by Gabelli, Santorre di Santarosa and Tommaseo. This data refers to school years 2013 and 2014 and includes the entire school population for the 3 school institutes – 1374 children in total. Within the selected area and in order to verify the incidence of the second generation area, the research team decided to question both parents and children about their birthplace. This was according to the current “Ius sanguinis” Italian citizenship law.

[11]Melloni A. Rapporto sull’analfabetismo religioso in Italia, cit., p. 490.

[12]www.comune.roma.it/wps/portal/pcr?contentId=NEW555876&jp_pagecode=newsview.wp&ahew=contentId:jp_pagecode, 02/06/2014.

[13]The small number of respondents of other religions and confessions invalidate the comparison. Absolute data is: Buddhist (1 family out of 8), Church of Christ (3 families out of 4), Hindus (3 out of 3 families), Orthodox (1 family out of 12), Jehovah’s Witnesses (1 family out of 3) , Protestants (1 family out of 4).

[14]K. Morgan, R. Sonnino The Food Revolution and the challenge of sustainable development, cit., p. 24.

[15]http://torino.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/03/29/news/perch_non_mangi_la_carne_i_menu_a_scuola_raccontano_i_cibi_degli_altri-82184691/ , 06/06/2014.

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