The environmental and nutrition crises disproportionately affect children. Approximately 180 million school age children live with malnutrition and 1 billion children are at high risk of suffering from food insecurity. This threatens the education, growth, and development of children and adolescents worldwide, as well as increasing the risks of morbidity and mortality. School meals are increasingly recognized as a key investment for governments, especially in the Global South, to tackle these challenges for children and provide a platform for food systems transformation. School meals programs are amongst the most established and extensive parts of public food systems worldwide, currently reaching 418 million children every day worldwide. Because the policy levers are in the hands of governments, and because of their reach and scale, national school meals programs provide an exceptional opportunity for the implementation of change to planet-friendly policies which have enormous co-benefits for child health and wider society. The message that investment in well-designed and holistic school meals programs yields substantial returns in terms of healthier, better educated, and empowered individuals who contribute positively to the overall advancement of society was reinforced at the recent 2023 UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stock Taking Moment. Governments of member countries of the School Meals Coalition, a network created with the goals of enhancing the reach, quality, and sustainability of school meals, committed to support healthier diets, shorter and more sustainable value chains, and a more equitable smallholder farmers’ and fishers’ economy, especially for women. Implementing such sustainable and healthy school meals programs also acts as a catalyst for the creation of more resilient and sustainable food systems that benefit the local economy. This potential can be achieved especially when school food is linked to the local and smallholder agriculture production such as in the home-grown school food (HGSF) approach, and when technical inputs and financial support are well targeted.
Photo by Thomas Chauke via Pexels