Feeding children while Asian

Immigrant families’ experiences with school lunches in Canada

Abstract

In feeding children in a new country, immigrant parents engage in continuous and ongoing adaptation. Children’s exposure to new food practices outside the home can sometimes conflict with parents’ efforts to maintain traditional foodways. This qualitative study explores the factors that influence Asian immigrant parents’ everyday decisions about packing cultural food in their children’s school lunches in Toronto, Canada. Through arts-informed interviews, 19 elementary school children (ages 7-13) and 17 parents from Indian and Chinese backgrounds shared their experiences. Findings reveal that family’s food identity and the convenience of cooking familiar recipes encourage the inclusion of cultural foods, while direct and indirect experiences of lunchbox shaming and school food environments discourage it. Factors such as children’s preferences, parental perceptions of healthy food, and classroom demographics influence parental decisions in both directions. These findings indicate that homemade school lunches communicate both immigrant families’ cultural heritage and their changing food habits in Canada. We argue that the upcoming national school food program carries high stakes: if not thoughtfully implemented with cultural inclusivity at its core, it risks further marginalizing non-dominant foodways and undermining the cultural agency of immigrant families.