School meals should be nothing less than nourishing

Free school meals are a chance to train children's evolving palates away from ultra-processed, nutrient-poor foods and towards whole foods that will nourish them. Anything less is a waste of public money 

Surely we can do better for children than processed chicken and ketchup? Picture: iStock

Every child has a right to healthy, nutritious food, but in Ireland, up to three in 10 children are living in food poverty. Children experiencing food poverty are more likely to live with health issues, because highly processed, energy dense and nutrient poor foods are cheaper and more accessible than healthier foods. 

Poor diet is a major health issue, burdening the next generation with chronic disease. The Government’s hot school meals scheme can address this, by providing children with the nutritious food they need to learn and thrive. Ultra-processed, nutrient poor foods have no place in the scheme.

The biggest health risks Irish children face from energy-dense, low-nutrient ultra-processed food include malnutrition (obesity, underweight and micronutrient deficiencies), constipation, and dental caries. Poorer children are disproportionately affected by these issues. 

The statistics are shocking: obesity is five times higher in schools designated as being in areas of disadvantage (Deis schools), while dental cavities and constipation are now resulting in more children presenting to hospital services. 

Type 2 diabetes, usually a disease that develops in later adulthood, is now seen in young children, predominantly from disadvantaged backgrounds. Even liver disease is now emerging in young adolescents, not as a consequence of alcohol, but poor diet. 

The Government’s hot school meals scheme is about tackling food poverty. At the very least, it should ensure a nourishing meal for those who need it most.

At least half of children attending hospital services here for obesity treatment report emotional difficulties because of stigma and discrimination they have borne. We have a problem with our children’s health, and the worst impacts are on children growing up in poverty.

We need to understand our dietary health is determined by factors that are mostly out of our hands. Choice is an illusion when it comes to the food we eat, because our choices are predetermined not just by biology, but by affordability and accessibility. 

Where we live, and the food surrounding us, our ‘food environment’, significantly influence what we eat and the health we will have throughout our lives much more strongly than personal responsibility.

Balance is really important when we talk about food and health. Some foods categorised as ultra-processed foods are healthy and can contribute to healthy diets, like wholegrain bread, and low saturated fat baked beans. 

Right now, we don’t have a good balance. But Irish research shows our children’s dietary patterns are now dominated by less healthy foods, displacing fruit, vegetables and wholegrains. This imbalance significantly increases in children attending Deis schools, fewer than half of whom consume three portions of fruit and vegetables daily.

High fat, salt and sugar foods which are heavily processed are increasingly associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes, to the extent they are now called “health harming substances” by the World Health Organization. 

These foods are flooding our food environment and driving our health crisis. Ultra-processed foods can be less than half the price per calorie than healthy food, and make up about 60% of the food in supermarkets. 

Areas which are more deprived have more fast food outlets, fewer supermarkets, and more convenience stores. They are blanketed with marketing which exploits young peoples’ developing taste and sensory preferences, and tracks their movements and purchases via mobile phone data to sell more of their most profitable products — energy dense, nutrient poor food. 

We can teach children about the food pyramid, but if we surround children with unhealthy food, how can they act on any nutrition knowledge we teach them? This is an injustice to our children. School meals present an opportunity to redress the balance.

“These ‘edible food-like substances’ have no place in Government strategies to help children eat healthier,” argues Professor Francis Finucane, an obesity specialist at Galway University Hospital. 

The meals currently available are often primarily based on refined carbohydrates — white pasta, white rice, white bread, with inadequate vegetables. File picture: Dan Linehan

“With the golden opportunity that our national dietetic expertise and the generous funding of this programme provides, we should have no problem providing wholesome, nutritious and healthy food to schoolchildren. Suggesting ultra-processed foods are part of the solution flies in the face of everything we know about their harms,” he said.

The nutritional standards for the hot school meal scheme are currently under review, and this is welcome. 

The meals currently available are often primarily based on refined carbohydrates — white pasta, white rice, white bread, with inadequate vegetables. Portions can be excessive. 

Many parents, concerned their child will not eat the meal, send in a packed lunch as well. This means children may eat the Government-funded chicken goujons, sausage baguette or pizza wrap, plus their packed lunch, and because-ultra processed foods tend to be higher in calories, lower in fibre, and easier to overeat, those children may develop constipation and may gain more weight than they should. 

Foods high in fat, salt or sugar will be removed from the scheme from September. But the review must go much further to ensure meals really benefit children’s health.

When it comes to feeding children, there are international standards which our Government must adhere to. The United Nations Charter for Human Rights, which Ireland ratified in 1997, mandates the government to protect health, and uphold and enable children’s right to receive not just enough food, but healthy and nutritious food. 

We need the Government to take the kind of ambitious and decisive action we saw when Ireland made history by becoming the first country in the world to ban smoking in the workplace. Tackling unhealthy food environments will mean taking strong policy action to restrict marketing and accessibility of unhealthy foods. 

At the same time, healthy foods need to be made more available and accessible. School meals can do contribute to this.

Globally, school feeding programmes are seen as a vital lever in transforming food systems and ensuring every child has access to healthy food. The Government is investing €325m a year into feeding primary school children at school, and has now introduced free meals in early childhood education settings. 

We have a chance to bring really nourishing wholesome food to every child from a young age, to improve their dietary health, and do so much more. But in its current form, the scheme could exacerbate inequalities. Giving another highly processed low-nutrient meal to a child who already subsists on such food only risks making existing problems worse.

In Ireland, there exists a very dangerous narrative that good food is somehow elitist or privileged. There are those who, playing into the hands of big food industry, will suggest people living in food poverty should get by on breakfast cereals or that parents just need to make better choices. 

Last year, the Kellogg’s chief executive suggested, unironically, that families struggling with the cost-of-living crisis should eat cereal for dinner. But everyone should have the right to access nutritious, wholesome food. 

The Government’s hot school meals scheme is about tackling food poverty. At the very least, it should ensure a nourishing meal for those who need it most.

Our schools and childcare settings are places where children should be safe from the profit-driven highly processed foods that are wrecking their health.

There are also those who will argue an uneaten meal provides no nutrition, and children are better off eating something than nothing. The argument follows that giving children familiar foods, healthy or not, is better than something they may leave uneaten. 

But evidence shows children consistently introduced to a variety of foods will become more open to eating them, and that sharing food with their peers encourages them to try new things. 

In countries like Sweden, Brazil, and Japan, school meal programmes guarantee nutritious foods, not with an endless array of choices, but with one or two healthy options available each day.

With public money now being used to fund free meals from early childcare settings right through primary school, and plans in the programme for government to extend to secondary schools, we have an immense opportunity to positively influence the way our children eat. 

To train their palates away from processed food, to teach the joy of good food, to give consistent messaging, and provide consistent access to nutritious food. It is unacceptable to use this public money to give children food that is less than truly nourishing.

 

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Our schools and childcare settings are places where children should be safe from the profit-driven highly processed foods that are wrecking their health. Public money should be used for public good, in this case, to guarantee nourishing food for all children.

• Melissa Byrne is a CORU registered dietitian, co-founder of the Kids Food Revolution (kidsfoodrevolution.com) and employed by the Health Service Executive. Views are the authors’ own.
• Ruth Hegarty is a food policy and sustainable food systems specialist and director of Food Policy Ireland, a food systems think-tank currently working towards piloting an alternative vision for school food in Ireland.