Narrator: This megakitchen in Japan
carefully prepares 3,000 school meals every day.
Since 1967, the Musashino City School
Lunch & Dietary Education Promotion Foundation
has been cooking these meals to promote
healthy eating habits among young children.
Narrator: We visited its kitchen,
Sakura Zutsumi Cookhouse,
to see how these lunches are made in such big batches.
The day's preparation starts around 7:30 each morning.
Staff members change into sanitized factory shoes
and color-coded uniforms
and wash their hands twice before entering the kitchen.
This is Takagi.
He is the nutritionist in charge of the menu,
and he's our tour guide for the day.
Narrator: The kitchen is spread across three floors
and spans three-quarters the area
of an American football field.
Inside, 70 staff members break into small units,
working in unison to prep, cook, and package
all of these meals in just under four hours.
Narrator: Today's meal consists of
millet rice, miso soup, sticky shumai dumplings,
cabbage and mustard sauté, and milk.
Takagi plans each meal three months in advance,
so the team has enough time
to source all of the ingredients
and account for students' allergies.
Every menu item he adds is tailored
to fit the nutritional needs of different age groups,
so every student gets the most nutritious meal
they can possibly have.
Narrator: This massive pot is large enough
to cook 750 kilograms of soup at a time.
The base of the broth is made by boiling
thick slices of dried bonito and Rausu kelp in water.
Narrator: Most of the staff who work here
are mothers of students.
And many of them take great pride
in knowing that the food is made with care
and nutritional and healthy ingredients.
Narrator: One of the most popular items
the kitchen makes is shumai.
Here, 15 staff members use 180 kilograms of ground pork,
40 kilograms of soybeans,
and a variety of blended vegetables
to make around 200 shumai by hand.
And by the end of the shift,
they'll make about 3,000 shumai.
Narrator: On top of monitoring allergies,
the kitchen is diligent about food safety.
Some of the meat used to fill the shumai
is always saved and monitored for bacterial growth.
Narrator: Besides safety,
the kitchen prioritizes using fresh, organic,
and local ingredients.
Narrator: To make the rice, the kitchen uses six giant pots.
Narrator: In total, 250 kilograms of rice
will be made in a very short period of time
using a special process.
Narrator: And finally, this is the main cooking area,
where the cabbage and mustard sauté is made.
140 kilograms of the washed cabbage is boiled
before getting sautéed with komatsuna leaf and carrots.
Narrator: Once all of the food is cooked,
meals are portioned into thermal containers
and loaded into five delivery trucks.
Narrator: All of the ingredients used
are funded by the students' families,
who pay school-lunch fees.
Each meal costs about 340 yen,
or roughly $2.50, for middle-school students,
and about 240 to 280 yen for elementary students.