Food for Life Aw

Food for Life healthy, local, organic school meals published by the Soil Association in partnership with Supported by Contents Foreword 3 Executive summary 5 1.0 Muck off a truck 11 2. 0 Food for Life 25 3. 0 Where did we go wrong? 35 4. 0 Inadequate standards 39 5. 0 The real price of cheap 45 6. 0 A legacy for life 51 7. 0 Food nations 63 8. 0 Pioneering schools 71 9. 0 Reinventing the supply chain 83 10. Learning to eat 91 Recommendations 99 Appendix 1: Caroline Walker Trust guidelines 103 Appendix 2: References 104 Appendix 3: Action list for heads and governors 107 Appendix 4: Further information 109 Acknowledgements 113 2 FOOD FOR LIFE Foreword “Excellence is not an act but a habit.” For more than two decades, minimal regulation has meant that attractive, Aristotle tasty and nutritious school meals made from quality ingredients have been sacrificed in favour of competition, convenience and cost. While limited steps were taken by Government in 2001 to reinstate standards for school meals, commercial pressures and narrow definitions of ‘Best Value’ continue to drive down the quality of the food offered to and eaten by children at school. The provision of school meals need not contribute to ill health, social problems at school, environmental degradation, animal suffering, rising imports and rural economic decline. Through greater use of less processed, more local, fresh and organic ingredients, vitamin and mineral intake could be raised significantly while fat, sugar, salt, pesticide residues, heavy metals, antibiotics, colourings, flavourings and other food additives could all be reduced in children’s school diets. Raising the quality of school meals in this manner would deliver far reaching benefits for public health, agriculture, the food industry, rural employment, food safety, education and culture. Such a policy would help deliver on issues already identified as a priority by a number of Government bodies and initiatives, including the Policy Commission report on Farming & Food – A sustainable future; the Cross-Government Sustainable Procurement Group; the Strategy for Sustainable Development and the Organic Action Plan. There has never been a stronger set of reasons for Government to make a decisive, far reaching and cross cutting intervention to upgrade school meal provision. Patrick Holden Lizzie Vann Director Founder and managing director Soil Association Organix Brands plc FOOD FOR LIFE 3 4 FOOD FOR LIFE Executive summary The case for decent school meals Children have a right to a decent school meal at the heart of their educational day. In 1944, the creators of the welfare state acknowledged that Government has a duty to address this need. With that recognition a universal school meals service flourished until the 1980 Education Act rendered school meals a non-essential provision and erased any duty to serve food ‘suitable in all respects as the main meal of the day.’ Other changes subsequently transformed a free education service into a commercial operation where, despite the recent imposition of new school meal standards, cost remains king above all other measures of value. The obesity epidemic Childhood overweight and obesity are rising at epidemic rates. The provision of healthy, high quality school meals is central to any effective national preventive paediatric health care strategy and to a well founded, socially inclusive primary education system. For our youngest citizens to become healthy and discerning adult consumers aware of what it takes to eat well, truly imaginative ‘seed-to-plate’ food education in all relevant areas of the school curriculum must enable them to connect with the natural world and the foundations of the food chain. Nothing less will secure a sustainable future for British food and farming or prevent the emerging disease burden now threatening the well-being of an entire generation. Cheap versus good A snapshot of current primary school food, based on summer term 2003 menus from a range of schools served by various catering organisations, confirms that the same trends now dominating choices in the supermarket and displacing fresh food from domestic kitchens are eroding the quality of school meals. With profit in the driving seat, ‘convenience’ foods have replaced time, labour and skill devoted to tasty and wholesome dishes made from scratch. At the same time, the share of total spending given over to FOOD FOR LIFE 5 fresh ingredients continues to fall. Despite the introduction of food-based nutritional standards across England and Wales in April 2001, the latest available evidence gathered from three independent sources suggests that primary school children continue to eat very badly. Fat, salt and sugar Most primary school kitchens still provide a standard meal (as opposed to a cafeteria service). The majority of the menus used offer children a low-grade diet of dematerialised fish, mechanically recovered meat and poor quality produce containing pesticide residues. Regardless of the healthy eating messages promoted in the classroom, most menus are dominated by ‘cheap’ processed and ‘fast’ food items packed with fat, salt or refined sugar, laden with artificial flavourings, colourings or preservatives and precariously low in essential nutrients. School meals for around 35 pence This pattern reflects how little is spent on ingredients under the ‘Best Value’ approach to the management of school catering contracts. Where a hot meals service survives, ‘food services operatives’ on short-term, low-paid contracts have increasingly replaced skilled cooks. Local authority catering organisations (which do not have to make a profit) commonly spend on average around 35 pence per child a day on primary school lunch ingredients. In areas where wage costs are higher, the food procurement chain more extended, or the provision contracted to a private company (that must generate a profit margin) this figure can be as low as 31 pence. Better meals in jail In contrast, the prison service currently spends £1.74 per prisoner a day on food ingredients. Assuming that lunch in either institution should provide around 35 per cent of daily nutritional needs and cost a proportionate amount, this figure suggests we spend roughly double (60 pence per lunch) on prison food compared to school meals (over and above any fresh ingredients supplied free to prison kitchens directly from prison farms). The inadequacy of 31 to 35 pence for school meal ingredients is well illustrated by the Local Authorities’ Caterers Association’s (LACA) annual contest to find the nation’s best school cook. In 2002 competitors were told they could spend up to 80 pence per head on ingredients for “a balanced two course meal.”1 The challenge is huge Parents and children are rejecting poor quality school lunches. The latest survey data from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) confirmed in September 2003 that more than half of all primary school pupils now bring a packed lunch. With around 4.4 million children attending nursery and primary school for 190 days a year, and average school meal prices running at around £1.60, this suggests that upwards of £670 million a year in turnover is being lost this way from the primary school meals system. As numbers fall viability declines, precipitating the withdrawal of hot school meals or the closure of kitchens, especially in smaller schools. This further disadvantages children entitled to free school meals by sentencing them to a bag lunch for what was the main meal of the day. Everybody loses from this spiral of decline. Breaking the spiral of decline To break this vicious cycle, Food for Life presents an alternative model in which predominantly fresh, local and organic food prepared from scratch delivers the safest, most nutritious and sustainable lunches possible to primary school children. This model has been tested by a small group of schools involved in a pilot project begun during the summer term 2003. To build on the progress made by these schools the Soil Association challenges catering organisations and schools to adopt the Food for Life targets designed to reform menus and supply chains to make school meals 30 per cent organic, 50 per cent locally sourced and 75 per cent unprocessed by weight of ingredients. 6 FOOD FOR LIFE Local and organic food Getting local and organic food into UK schools requires reform of public and private sector catering procurement. A few local authorities already realise this and have begun to change how they purchase ingredients. Contrary to claims made by much of the catering industry, this activity does not breach EU purchasing rules. Indeed, it is also already taking place in several parts of Europe. In Italy it is now possible to find over 300 examples of organic school meals schemes and approximately 100,000 children eating organic food at school every day. At least six other EU countries also have pro- active public sector catering initiatives built on priority for local and organic food in pursuit of the multiple economic, social, health and environmental gains delivered by this approach. With support and sufficient new funding from government, all schools and local authorities could deliver wholesale improvements in school meals through tighter standards, better staff training and facilities, the development of local supply chains and by spending more money on better quality and organic ingredients of known provenance. Scotland shows the way The Scottish Executive has already committed an extra £63.5 million over three years to fund a programme of school meal reform. This includes quantified nutritional standards accompanied by a wide ranging programme of kitchen and dining hall refurbishment destined to benefit all state primary and secondary pupils (in line with costed recommendations made to the Executive in the Hungry for Success report). Spending more on quality ingredients Producing a fully costed budget for the reform of all UK primary school meals is beyond the scope of this report, but it is estimated that a similar programme for English and Welsh primary schools would require an initial commitment of no less than £200 million per annum.

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