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In primary school meals convey the standard diet as the correct and nondiscriminatory feeding strategy for this age group. The public nature of this educational policy can be explained either as a way to implement collective wellbeing or as a standardization of pupils' eating habits which cut across their social background and look like the Victorian idea of moral control. The authors suggest a deep relationship with the full time at school (differently distributed in Italian regions) and the early-onset of eating disorders. They also draw up an objective evaluation method of meals leftovers, which makes the teaching staff able to check out regularities in pupils' atypical behaviors (not enough or too much food intake if compared to their nutritional requirements; etc.) and their reasons. This tool can usefully predict the early-onset of an eating disorder and generate data to be submitted to experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]