How many times a week should children eat pulses?

Pulses are probably the food with the biggest gap between what's recommended and what actually gets eaten. And in the school canteen, that gap is especially wide.

How often

Recommendations for children's diets in Catalonia put pulses at several times a week, and stress a detail that often gets missed: also as a main course, not just as a starter in the form of soup or stew with potato.

That detail is what separates a menu that's correct from one that only looks that way. A plate of lentils with potato and carrot is a starter; if the main course is meat, plant protein hasn't replaced anything. Barcelona's Public Health Agency found that two out of three canteens audited offered no plant-protein main course at all during the week.

Why it's such a struggle

• Habit. Pulses have a reputation as a heavy, old-fashioned winter dish.
• Prep time. Getting them right takes soaking and cooking time, and kitchens in a hurry reach for tins or skip them altogether.
• Texture. Badly cooked, pulses turn grainy, and children reject them, fairly.
• Not enough variety. If it's always the same stew, it gets boring fast.

How to get them eaten

• Change the format. Hummus, chickpea "meatballs", lentil burgers, falafel, bean pâté. The same pulse in a shape children recognise.
• Cold in summer. A chickpea salad with tomato and cucumber looks nothing like a stew, and it's the same food.
• Generous cooking time. A well-cooked pulse is creamy. An undercooked one is grainy and hard to eat.
• Pair with a grain. Lentils with rice, chickpeas with couscous. Easier to digest, and the dish gains from it.
• Don't hide it. Blending everything works for one day; recognising the chickpea is what means they'll be cooking it themselves in ten years.

What about the wind?

It's the objection that always comes up. It helps to soak pulses long enough, change the soaking water, cook them with a bay leaf or a little cumin, and above all eat them regularly: tolerance improves with habit. Someone who eats pulses once every three months notices it far more than someone who eats them twice a week.

What to look for on your child's menu

Take the month's sheet and count two things: how many times pulses appear in total, and how many of those are as a main course. If the second number is zero, you already have a specific question to raise with the canteen committee.