The charity’s main battle is within the school walls where, they believe, if good habits are instituted, the temptations that lie beyond your doors will diminish significantly. That starts with breakfast, swapping sugary cereals for eggs or porridge, and continues through after-school snacks, where they want to challenge “the candy-for-treats anomaly”; the mindset that a day’s efforts should be rewarded with unhealthy food. The biggest difference would come, she says, through a full rollout of free school meals. This week the Welsh Government announced that they will be given to all foster children from September and to all primary school pupils in the country by 2024.
For those who remember the days of turkey twizzlers and mounds of custard on the canteen tray at lunchtime, packed lunches would seem to trump school dinners, health-wise. But Slater points to a 2020 study from the University of Leeds that estimated that around one per cent of packed lunches met government nutritional guidelines.
Since 2015, the School Food Standards require one or more vegetables as an accompaniment to a school-produced meal every day, at least three different fruits and three vegetables each week, whole grains instead of refined carbohydrates, and restrictions on fruit juices , fried foods and those with added sugars; however, candy stores and vending machines can undo all of that before morning break.
Add a cost-of-living crisis to the mix, and reliance on cheap, high-calorie foods will get “a lot worse,” says Anna Taylor of the Food Foundation, whose goal is to improve children’s diets.
“There is a big bias towards the most disadvantaged children who get type 2 diabetes,” he notes; The Diabetes UK research found that four in 10 children in the poorest areas surveyed had the condition, compared to one in 19 in the richest. The condition causes excessive tiredness and thirst, as well as an increased risk of heart, eye, and nerve problems. “We’re not seeing ‘leveling up’ in practice,” Slater says of the numbers.
With school meals costing around £2.30-£2.50 a day, and many fast food outlets offering chicken and chips for as little as £1.50, the nutritious option just doesn’t add up for struggling families. Taylor explains. “We really need to start looking at the larger environment that our children and young people are subjected to, and how we can change that to make it easier for them to eat well.”
Many had hoped that last week’s report would address the health dangers derailing children, but it only served to “kick the heels of the white paper on health disparities,” due to be released later this year. .
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