Imagine sixth-formers at your school winning a contract to supply Tesco Metro with healthy convenience food. Low-fat pie in the sky? Not in Japan.
The country has developed an obesity problem in recent years. Now healthy alternatives to the usual takeaway “bento” lunch box of white rice and nutritionally inferior meat, or unappetising sugary fish, are very much to the fore.
This has worried Japan’s many convenience stores which sell the food. So retailer Ministop invited pupils across Japan to suggest their ideas. As a result, 16 teenagers from Osaka spent five months developing a sample product, which was tested in February and launched last week.
The chain has promised some profits to their schools, should the new bentos prove a success.
