It’s not just teaching and curriculum that need a boost in September - what about school fruit and veg?

The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme offers 2.3 million children aged 4 to 6 attending state-funded primary schools in England a free piece of fruit or veg each school day. It was suspended in March and after months of campaigning the Government finally confirmed the scheme will resume in the Autumn. But how could this Scheme go further to better meet Government aims?

Sofia Parente, Sustainable Food Places Policy & Campaigns Coordinator at Sustain: alliance for better food & farming

Credit: Pexels.com cottonbro

School holidays are upon us and this year, for the first time, 1.3 million UK children on free school meals will have access to support during July and August. Universal Infant Free School Meals and the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, suspended when schools closed in March, will be back in September. This should be cause for celebration but unfortunately, it’s not just teaching and curriculum needing a boost in September. Even in ‘normal times’ 80% of children were not eating their 5 A Day. Following lockdown, there’s been a massive decrease in fruit and vegetable intake reported by children receiving free school meals, according to a study from Northumbria University’s Healthy Living Lab. In this study just over half of pupils who would have received free school meals on site stated they had eaten no fresh vegetables across a three-day period following the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown. Vegetable intake dropped from just over two portions per day when children were attending school, to an average of half a portion per day at home. Almost half said they had eaten no fruit in the same period, yet many reported a large increase in their consumption of sugary drinks and snacks. 

As a school Governor and mother of two children in primary school, I’ve heard countless praises of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme. Children are naturally hungry mid-morning and fruit and vegetables are the perfect snack. By eating together in the classroom or playground, pupils try fruit and veg that they wouldn’t otherwise try at home. Only last week my niece (a fussy eater when it comes to veg) told me the first time she had ever tried sugar snap peas was in Year 2 when she had free fruit and veg at school. Teachers often integrate it in the curriculum too by using fruit and vegetables in numeracy and literacy lessons.

The reinstatement of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme is good news but still some way off when it comes to tackling historical low levels of fruit and veg consumption and under-investment in school food. It only reaches children in Key Stage 1 (pupils aged between 5 and 7) in England and there is no comparable scheme in Wales or Northern Ireland, although in Scotland some local authorities fund fruit in schools.

BIGGER

One of the best ways to ensure children increase access to fruit and vegetables at school is to bring back the scheme bigger and better and to introduce it to other nations in the UK. An efficient procurement process and network of delivery centres makes it possible to deliver 2.3 million pieces of fruit and vegetables to 16,600 schools in England every school day working out at around 8p per child per day. We’ve seen extraordinary progress in food and farming strategy this week. The first report from the National Food Strategy includes strong recommendations to address food poverty and inequality. And the Government’s obesity strategy has arguably some of the most ambitious new policies to date, particularly the 9pm advertising watershed for unhealthy food, with parallel restrictions online and on social media, along with constraints on promotions and progress on labelling. Expanding the scheme to all children in primary school using the set up already in place would be a remarkable value for money measure to help Government meet the ambitions of these two new strategies by helping to level off some of the inequalities in access to fresh fruit and vegetables and would be a game changer given the low levels of fruit and veg eaten by children. The latest evaluation of the scheme shows that while it leads to an increase in younger children eating fruit and veg, longer and integrated interventions would lead to long-lasting impact and sustained levels of consumption in older children.

Better

The first and easiest change to improve the scheme would be to increase the proportion of British seasonal fruit and veg produced to higher standards. According to the Soil Association, only 30-40% of this produce is grown in the UK. Why are we serving imported rock-hard apples to children in schools surrounded by apples in season in orchards in Kent and Somerset or to children anywhere in the UK come to that? This flagship Government procurement scheme should be supporting British farmers and traders, not least to support the aims of other Government departments, but to help the economy, especially now after Britain’s departure from the EU and the uncertainty in the food and farming sector triggered by COVID-19.

The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme should be re-specified to provide a year-on-year percentage increase of seasonal and certified sustainable produce - such as the Organic or LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) mark - to help drive towards the Government’s aims in the Environment Bill, Agriculture Bill and climate legislation. This would result in increased fruit and vegetable consumption and benefit British farmers, children and the environment.

Image: Credit: Pexels.com cottonbro

Why I left a full-time teaching role to pursue a passion for school food research

Kelly Rose, Graduate Tutor/PhD researcher at Teesside University, writes about her journey to help young people make healthy food choices in a guest post for National School Meals Week.

‘Why?’ was the question I was asked numerous times when I first announced that I would be leaving my role as ‘Head of health education, and food and nutrition’ teacher in a well-respected secondary school. A job everyone around me knew I had loved; it had provided me with job satisfaction and I was able to make a difference everyday (because that’s what teachers do). To add to the incredulity of those around me, not only was I leaving this hard earned role, I was taking a 50% pay cut to embark on a short-term research contract to complete my PhD with no assurance of job security afterwards!

Here is a little background about why I came to - what was for me - a very easy decision.

As an adolescent I found myself in an extremely confused state about healthy food choices, being the ‘right’ weight and having a positive mental health. Then, when I became a mum, the painful realisation that my girls may be feeling that confusion made me want to make a societal change in whatever way I could. Not really knowing where to start, at 32 years old I threw myself into a degree in Food, Nutrition and Health Science. At this stage my only qualifications were four GCSEs and a BTEC diploma in Travel and Tourism. I still don’t know how I believed I could do it!

Three years later I had become so passionate about the power of food that I wanted to teach it to as many young people as possible. With renewed confidence, my First-class honours, and an award winning third-year ‘school lunch’ poster project, off I went to complete a PGCE in design and technology. In that year I spent more time making a wooden stool than learning about nutrition (approximately three hours) because that’s how we still train food teachers – but that’s a story for another time.

I discovered that I loved to teach and, in addition to my teaching, did all I could to help young people make healthy choices. I researched interventions, registered on courses, spoke at various events including ‘Food Matters Live’ in London and was invited to speak at a dietetic student conference at The Hague, Holland. I was thriving and learning so much about the education system: the teaching leads were happy, the GCSE results were superb, and we were improving the healthy choices and the health education in the school. It was a fantastic opportunity to be in a place where the leadership supported the health agenda. Even so, after a while, it became clear that there were barriers that were much larger than the school environment: policy change had become confusing and the support in implementing food standards had disappeared. The external environment of advertising close to schools, proliferation of fast food outlets and shops offering cheap energy drinks. The social norms around eating behaviour in our teenagers had become a turbulent misunderstood tangle of factors, and this with all of the curriculum changes and budget cuts! It was in my last two years (of seven teaching) that I spent time writing PhD proposals, knowing that to make a change I needed to be able to add research to this field, to inform the decision making processes.

That is why I feel extremely lucky to have been given the opportunity to do research at Teesside University and to have access to inspirational researchers and existing work through the Fuse network, and of course to fulfil the dream of having a positive impact on the school food environment.

I am now 8 weeks into my graduate tutor/PhD researcher post and I am sure that I have made the right decision. I used the library every day in my first week, pinching myself, not quite believing I was here with time to research and learn. Every day I am learning and have so far developed a timeline of policy past-to-present, an ecological framework of everything that impacts school food choice from the macro level (government structure and policy, sustainability focus, food supply, food industry and manufacturing, behaviours etc.) to the external and internal physical settings and the individual students. I know from my time in education that consistency and communication are key components of making sustainable healthy change in schools. I hope that I will be able to provide a clear direction on where that focus should be to contribute to the reduction of the ‘obesogenic’ environment for our young people. I have far to go in understanding the myriad of methodologies required to do this work, but I will delve into past research and attend workshops to learn all I can. As I develop questions and embark on a systematic review I have the feeling that I am at the bottom of a huge mountain, ready to make the climb. It is just the beginning and I am aware that significant patience and discipline are going to be needed to get to the top of that mountain.

I look forward to meeting you on my journey.


#schoolmealsshoutout #NSMW18

Find out more about National School Meals Week here: http://thegreatschoollunch.co.uk

From school dinners to sugar tax: Jamie Oliver to the rescue!

Guest post by Dr Victora J. McGowan, Research Associate, Teesside University

I have to say thanks to Jamie Oliver, the media attention from his School Dinners programme led to research questions which went on to form my PhD project (the effect of school meal legislation on child malnourishment). After completing my PhD I thought that would be the end to my connection with the celebrity chef, little did I know that our paths would cross again a few years later. I began work at Teesside University in October 2014 charged with conducting a systematic review into the effects of fiscal strategies on sugar consumption in collaboration with Public Health England (PHE). PHE had recently published 'Sugar reduction: responding to the challenge' which outlined the work they would undertake to assess the evidence base and identify potential areas that would be effective in reducing sugar consumption.

While we were busy searching through over seven thousand research papers the media were just as diligent in searching for almost anyone (including me) to provide information on whether the government would introduce a sugar tax. As we inched closer to the final number of relevant studies which we’d include in our review, Jamie Oliver waded into the debate. I admire the way he uses his celebrity status to push a healthy food agenda, however, I’m often left thinking whether his involvement does more damage than good. In terms of school food, I interviewed school cooks who said his School Dinners series resulted in an almost immediate decline in children taking a school meal. Some might say this was a good thing if the food was as bad as Jamie portrayed it. Well, it wasn’t that bad everywhere and this reduction in school meal uptake had a detrimental effect on the cooks as their salary was based on the number of children taking a school lunch. So when he entered the debate on a sugar tax it made me nervous. Jamie was branded a "patronising bully" by Alex Deane Executive Board Member of the People Against Sugar Tax campaign and tory MP Andrew Percy said Jamie’s suggestion of a sugar tax was "a classic nanny state reaction and it won’t work". I truly believe Jamie means well but his celebrity status often clouds the evidence and can result in detrimental consequences.

As we were in the process of finalising our review of the evidence, a total of 11 published studies, Jamie’s sugar tax campaign was gathering momentum with an online petition to have the issue debated in parliament and a new series being aired, Sugar Rush. Jamie wasn’t alone in his campaign, groups such as Action on Sugar and the Children’s Food Campaign, had been pushing for a tax long before Jamie came along, however, the addition of one more cook had the potential to spoil the broth. The authors of the School Food Plan, John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby have also advocated the introduction of a sugar tax and already introduced a 10p levy on sugar sweetened drinks in their LEON restaurants. However, with great celebrity status comes great responsibility. A recent article by Sian Griffiths discussed how the proceeds from these unofficial sugar taxes could be used to pay for drinking fountains in public parks with the view that it may help children access free drinking water rather than purchase sugary drinks. A novel idea but would it work? I asked John Vincent on Twitter whether kids would use these drinking fountains, he hasn't responded.

Before the ink had dried on our final copy reviewing the scientific evidence, Jamie Oliver et al had already decided that a sugar tax would reduce consumption and the government must take action. When PHE published Sugar reduction: evidence to action (see annexe 2 for our fiscal review) in October 2015 it almost seemed like closing the barn door after the horse had bolted. The media furore around the topic was so great that articles were too busy calling Jamie names and telling readers it was nanny state gone mad to pay any attention to the evidence. Our review of the evidence, although based on a small number of studies, suggested that consumers are responsive to changes in food and drink prices and this supports the evidence from modelling studies which indicate a tax of 10-20% would have a significant impact on purchases. Moreover, recent evidence from Mexico has shown that purchases of sugar sweetened drinks declined by up to 12% after the introduction of a sugar tax.

The evidence collated by PHE indicates that a sugar tax could have an impact on population health if implemented alongside a range of other strategies such as reducing marketing exposure and price promotions on high sugar products (we also reviewed the marketing evidence see annexe 3). However, this seems to have been diluted by the media whose attention has been focused on taxation. There are benefits to celebrity chefs wading into the public health arena as they can help bring some attention to important issues. However, I think they need to be mindful that their high media profile could have negative consequences. Parents, children, and school meal staff did not take too kindly to Jamie “transforming” school lunches and the skewed media attention on a sugar tax has the potential to undermine the evidence base before any attempts are made to implement a potentially beneficial health policy.