For students in France, a full lunch for €1 is available at university restaurants and cafes.

The French government announced this month that €1 meals, previously limited to students with scholarships and those on low incomes, would be extended to all students in higher education after a survey found almost half were skipping meals because they could not afford to eat.

At the Université Paris Dauphine restaurant in Paris, students can get a starter, a vegetarian, meat or fish main with potato and vegetable sides, and fruit, yoghurt, cheese or a pastry for dessert for €1. On most term days, they can also help themselves to a salad bar or pick a pizza. Extra dishes cost 55 cents and coffee costs 60 cents.

Farid Rouba, the chef who oversees the Dauphine university kitchen, said most dishes were produced in-house and made with “a healthy balance of locally sourced products”, many of them organic.

“They gave us 9/10 in a recent questionnaire. Our clients are the students and we listen to them when drawing up the menus. We are feeding people who are the future of France and it’s important they eat well,” he said.

Diane Chelkoff, the director of the Dauphine restaurant, said: “The students can have two balanced €1 meals a day from here, either eating here or take-away.

“It helps those students that are not receiving financial aid but find it difficult to make ends meet.

“Most of the dishes are put together by us here so we know what goes in them. The chef works hard to come up with a good, balanced menu and listens to what the students suggest.”

During busy term days, the Dauphine restaurant seats 2,400 students in three sittings. Takeaways are available in the university cafe next door, and Chelkoff said the kitchen was prepared for higher demand when the university year begins in September.

Students said the meals made a difference. “We eat here every day. There’s always a good variety,” Jérémy Reyes, 20, said.

Yuqi Yang, 26, from China, who is studying for a second master’s degree in marketing after a first master’s degree in linguistics at the Sorbonne, said: “I don’t have a lot of money so I always come here to eat. It’s very good.”

At the Mabillon university restaurant used by Sorbonne students, Julie Bénard, 22, said: “I eat here almost every day and there’s always a good choice. I’m on a scholarship so it’s a big saving.”

Mehdi A’ït Naceur, 22, said: “It’s a financial help for those who are not on scholarships but who still don’t have much money.”

Maxime Daniel, 26, a PhD student, said: “It’s a little basic. If I had to pay the full tariff, I’d probably just get a sandwich or something slightly better quality, but for €1 everyone can eat.”

From 2020 until this month, only students with low incomes or receiving financial aid with housing and fees, roughly a quarter of those in higher education, were eligible for the €1 meals. Other students paid €3.30, a price that had not increased for five years.

Student unions pushed for the lower price to be opened to all after the survey found almost half of students were missing meals to save money and a quarter were doing so regularly.

“The country has decided to invest public money in its students,” Bénédicte Durand, the president of the National Centre for University and School Services, or CNOUS, told the Guardian.

“It’s not just a question of making life easier for those at university, but also a question of social and public health,” she said.

Durand said the €1 meals are served at 950 restaurants and cafeterias run by CNOUS, including those at teaching hospitals. The government has promised €120 million to fund them next year, and CNOUS is seeking 200 extra staff and more equipment to meet demand.

Not every student backs the universal subsidy. Antoine Lebrun, 20, said: “Those who can afford to pay €3.30 should. I find it anti-equality that everyone should pay the same price when it’s already cheap.”

Reyes said: “Obviously everyone will say paying €1 for an entire meal is a good thing, but I’d rather the money be put into cheaper accommodation for students.”

Read more from The Guardian.