An American mom who moved to Italy with her family has been comparing the school lunches her kids enjoy there to the ones back home.
Clara Hogan moved to the city of Bologna with her husband and their two young children, now aged four and six, in the fall of 2024.
“My husband and I were both working hard in the Bay Area and like a lot of families, we felt caught in a constant rush and under a lot of financial pressure,” Hogan told Newsweek. “We had two small children in preschool and realized we wanted to experience a slower pace of life and to give them a chance to experience a different culture.”
The plan had originally been to stay for a year while her husband completed an MBA at the University of Bologna. However, they soon began to feel settled in Italy and decided to stay longer.
“Moving abroad with two little kids was not easy for many reasons—new language to learn, new cultural customs to understand, and news systems to navigate,” Hogan said. “But now in our second year here, we are starting to feel more settled into our community and routines.”
They got rid of the family cars, opting to walk everywhere, taking in the idyllic local scenery and learning more about their surroundings. Children are welcome everywhere they go, while Hogan’s kids, in the Italian equivalent of pre-school and the first grade respectively, are also now both almost completely fluent in Italian.
“And of course, [there’s] the access to fresh and amazing food,” Hogan adds.
Italy is famous for its cuisine, but moving to the country has opened Hogan’s eyes to another aspect of culinary life there: school lunches. Hogan has her own distinct memories of school lunches.
“Growing up, I remember school lunch in the U.S. as very functional and fast,” she said. “You lined up, grabbed your tray, ate quickly, and moved on ASAP. I think most millennials remember the strange square pizza with the waxy cheese—I’m still not convinced that it counted as real food.”
She soon discovered that to be a world away from what her kids ate on a daily basis at school in Italy. In a video posted to her TikTok, @clarahogan, Hogan laid out what lunch looks like for her kids on an average week. On Thursdays, for example, her kids start with a first course of gramigna pasta served in a traditional ragu tomato sauce. Their second course is cauliflower meatballs with peas and onions while oranges and apples are also provided.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg though, with Hogan’s video listing of the entire “amazing” menu her kids enjoy. “It’s funny, the Italian parents I know here actually kind of still complain about the lunch and wish it was better. They have high standards here,” Hogan. “But as an American coming into the public school system, I’m super happy with the quality of food my kids get every day.”
Hogan said the difference in what was being served to her kids at school was something she noticed “immediately.” Seeing the variety of courses, the focus on healthy balance and the fact her kids get an entire hour for lunch is something she feels really happy about and grateful for.
“It’s not just about healthy meals, it’s about learning a healthy, positive relationship with food, and having the time and space to slow down and enjoy it,” she said.
The quality of food and time given to eat it are both areas of concern to U.S. parents. In 2024, a study published in the journal Health Affairs Scholar based on a survey of 1,100 parents in the California area found only half felt their child had enough time to eat (54.2 percent), while fewer parents perceived school lunches to be of good quality (36.9 percent), tasty (39.6 percent), or healthy (44.0 percent).
Hogan posted about school lunches to TikTok as part of an ongoing effort to share glimpses of her life in Italy and the parts she thinks “people back home in the U.S. would find interesting.”
This particular clip went viral, amassing 2.6 million views and sparking plenty of debate. One user wrote: “My first thought was wow no kids at my school in the USA would eat this stuff, they are way too picky. But it just goes to show that a lot of kids are picky because they aren’t exposed to a wide variety of foods. They just eat chicken nuggets and butter noodles.”
Others were impressed at the amount of time kids get for lunch in Italy.
“My daughter is always starving when she comes home because they rush them to eat and don’t allow them to eat snacks!” one viewer said.
Reflecting on the video’s success, Hogan suggested that, in these divisive times, the topic of child nutrition was one everyone could come together on.
“I think in the U.S. a lot of topics become politicized, but when it comes to feeding our children, improving the food we serve in schools—and what’s available on grocery store shelves—feels important to every parent,” she said. “Even if we don’t all agree on the exact policies to get there, it’s something we can agree on at a fundamental level.”
Hogan hopes her video serves as a reminder that “what we feed kids in school matters.”
“It affects how full, happy, and nourished they feel, how well they can focus and learn throughout the day, and it helps set them up with healthy habits for life,” she said.
