Comment: Healthy eating starts at home

Aug 14 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

THE days of tuck shops and “chips with everything” school dinners have become increasingly numbered as the health eating message gathers pace, amid warnings of growing childhood obesity problems.

Now Liverpool City council is preparing to take a significant step forward in improving the health of young children – free school meals for every primary school pupil.

The plan is the most ambitious proposal to date to have come from the city’s collaboration with Liverpool PCT to improve health in schools.

The outcome of this bold scheme depends on the findings of a feasibility report to look at the costings. There will be a bill of around £20m-a-year if it goes ahead – potentially part-funded by the NHS – although the question “what price a child’s health?” is surely relevant in this debate.

Studies by UK experts show many children's packed lunches contain too much fat, sugar and salt. The fizzy drinks they are given to keep them hydrated often have large amounts of sugar and can cause tooth decay.

A Food Standards Industry report even discovered that three out of four lunchboxes packed for children in England and Wales failed to meet the Government’s own nutritional standards for school meals.

The Liverpool plan, if approved, would be a step in the right direction, but it cannot be considered fair for the burden of ensuring children eat healthily to fall solely on the shoulders of schools and officials. For parents have the biggest role of all to play in this; when they send children to school with dinner money – possibly suspecting it will be spent on sweets instead of nutritious, filling food – or when they stuff chocolate and crisps in lunch-boxes without thinking of the consequences, they are ducking their responsibilities.

The city council and PCT are right to want to give young children access to free, nutritious food in their school day; the trick will be for parents to ensure that home means healthy eating, too.