Report to the People
Free School Meals
Its hardly a state secret that public health in Scotland is, especially in the West, diabolical. Neither is the fact that if we are to turn the situation around, we need to change our lifestyles.
The seeds are sown while we’re still children – especially where diet is concerned. Fresh fruit is cast aside in favour of chip rolls. Milk is nothing like as attractive as the sugary soft drinks, attractively advertised in comics, magazines, billboards and, now, children’s own TV channels. The problem is, as it always has been, that what we like as children and what's good for us rarely coincide.
So how do we tackle this?
One idea was debated in the Scottish Parliament last Thursday – a bill to give free, nutritious school meals in the middle of the day to every child in Scotland. This, its supporters argued, would reduce stigma, increase uptake and, hence, increase public health.
At first glance this does seem attractive. But, as the Education Committee, the Executive and a wide range of MSPs from different parties agreed, the bill would not achieve those laudable objectives.
Requiring schools to give free meals to all children would double the number of meals served, require extra sittings, disrupt the school day and require dining halls and kitchens to be extended. Then, on top of the cost of any building work, it would also require finding around £170 million every year. (Not an extra penny of which would go to the poorest children in Scotland.)
And – short of force feeding them – there’s no guarantee that kids won’t still be queuing up outside the chip shop or ice cream van, while £170 million worth of school dinners are going cold. No matter how healthy or cheap you make school meals, children have to actually eat them before they’ll do anything to improve public health.
So if free school dinners isn’t the solution, what is?
When considering the free school meals plan, the Parliament’s Education Committee took a great deal of detailed evidence on this. They concluded that measures such as free, fresh drinking water; discouraging vending machines in schools; using swipe cards to reduce the stigma of free dinners; and the setting of nutritional standards around nutrient-based guidelines would be more effective.
Targeted, practical measures such as these are not the complete answer, but taken together with initiatives to encourage exercise and keep children away from drugs and cigarettes, they can and should make a real difference.
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