Hot School Meals Programme: Are children getting the food they need?

Michelle Darmody and Jolene Cox examine the Hot School Meals Programme’s nutritional problems and look at alternatives from Ireland and abroad

Hot School Meals: Michelle Darmody and Jolene Cox examine nutrition, food waste and what needs to change.

The €300m universal Hot School Meals Programme has been running nationally for a full year, and a review of the scheme brought to Cabinet this week highlights serious issues with nutritional value and food waste.

Critics have been highlighting these problems, along with issues such as trucks of pre-cooked food being transported across the country and the use of 100 million disposable packaging items each year.