Every school day, India feeds 100 million children. This school lunch system is not only the largest in the world but also provides meals completely free.
Before the recent General Election in the United Kingdom, the Conservative manifesto fruitlessly set out to axe universal free school meals for infants—a move that would have affected over 900,000 children. By the time of the Queen’s Speech, the plan had been dropped.
Labour’s manifesto, meanwhile, committed to extending lunches to feed every primary school child. This begs the question: if India can fund a £1.5bn school lunch program from her coffers, surely Britain—as the fifth-richest country in the world—can also afford to feed all her children?
A global phenomenon
Nearly every developed country provides some form of school lunches. Finland and Sweden ensure that they are free for all children from the age of six. Many middle-income countries, like India, additionally protect the right of every child to be free from classroom hunger in law—ensuring that future governments do not downsize school meals and maintain nutrition standards.But Latin America is by far the most progressive. In Brazil, Honduras, Bolivia, Paraguay, El Salvador, Cuba and Ecuador, universal meals are even served in pre-schools. Across Latin America, school meals have contributed to reducing stunted growth in children by 56 percent in the past 25 years.
Yet school meals are not only about food. Young children also learn to share a meal, socialise and develop eating habits at a crucial age. In Japanese schools, children even distribute the food themselves, clean up afterwards, and learn to reduce food waste and recycle. School meals also have a multiplier footprint on the local economy. They ensure regular demand for farmers and suppliers, employment—there are 80,000 dinner ladies in the UK—and savings for struggling families.
Unfortunately, school lunches are becoming increasingly embroiled in politics. Recently Donald Trump cut back on school meal nutrition standards, set by Barack Obama. Theresa May wants free lunches off the table, even though Jeremy Corbyn has a concrete plan to feed every primary school child.
Why free lunches should be universal
Of course, some argue, as the Tory manifesto did, that it is not necessary to subsidise all children, but only the poor. Yet across America, for example, targeted poor children increasingly face the stigma of ‘lunch shaming’. A child can apparently have their lunch taken away if their family has overdue payments or be stigmatised with wristbands, stickers or body stamps which read "I need lunch money."Also, as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen insightfully put it, “benefits meant exclusively for the poor often end up being poor benefits.” The poor quality of meals in the UK is a testimony to this. Three years ago, 9-year-old Martha Payne started a blog to highlight the sorry state of lunches in Scotland—in the early days the only unprocessed vegetables or fruits on the plate, if at all, were a few slices of cucumber.
Universal meals are invariably of better quality. In Britain, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has been on a decade-long crusade to improve the quality of lunches to combat both classroom hunger and childhood obesity. (Nearly a third of young children in the UK are overweight or obese.)
In contrast, Sweden and Finland, which serve free food to all children, are also renowned for their nutritious meals, without fried snacks or soft drinks. Perhaps it is also no wonder that France and Japan, which have universal lunches—albeit at reduced prices, rather than free, for the rich—also serve some of the healthiest (three course) meals. A recent US study demonstrates that healthy school meals are more effective when it comes to improving test scores.
Are breakfast clubs better?
The matter of results raises a further question: whether breakfast clubs are more effective than universal free schools meals. Worldwide, most countries serve lunch and a few both.But a UK study controversially recommends that breakfast clubs could effectively replace lunches—though, in practice, only 24 percent of children opted to come early to receive the free breakfasts. These pilots also relied heavily on food donations and volunteers. Nevertheless, the Tory manifesto drew from the study, to embarrassingly allocate only 7 pence per child for substitute free school breakfasts.
Footing the bill
This brings us to arguably the most important question: who will foot the bill? Making children pay is counterproductive, as they usually prefer to spend cash on chips and sugary drinks.Worldwide, different countries adopt different strategies. India’s £1.5bn school lunch program, for example, is financed by a top-up tax of 3 percent on all other taxes. El Salvador funnels the interest from the privatisation of a state-owned company.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour manifesto had a sensible plan to raise £1bn to fund meals in state schools through a new VAT tax on rich private schools. Incredulously, the Tories wanted something close to the reverse: to cut infant meals and fund selective grammar schools, which contribute to education inequality.
Maybe for a change Britain and America should learn from developing countries, like India, to legislate school meals—as the right of every child. Their regulation should rise above the whims of politicians. As Michelle Obama recently implored “every elected official in this planet”: “don’t play with our children.”
