A survey of parents with children aged 4-17 years by Flinders Caring Futures Institue exploring current school food practices has found that parents support the idea of school-provided meals.
Of those surveyed, 86% of parents reported interest in introducing school-provided meals, citing convenience, social and environmental benefits, variability and food security as their primary reasons. Parents preferring to maintain homemade lunches said nutrition and food safety concerns were their key reasons.
Researchers say school-provided meals have been shown to improve attendance, classroom attention, cognition, academic performance, social skills, nutrition and health of children, while also providing a way to address food insecurity.
“Families have described how challenging the provision of healthy, enjoyable and affordable lunchboxes can be, so we need to start thinking about how what we can do to better support families,” says study co-author Dr Brittany Johnson.
“It’s the right time to start a national conversation about embracing school-provided meals.
“Embracing school-provided meals requires a transformation of the existing Australian system, to create an equitable system, which achieves benefits for children and families. Our preliminary data demonstrates an emerging parental interest in adopting such a system.
“We need to ask- do we need school-provided meals in Australia and what could this look like in an Australian context?” she says.
The survey findings are expected to be presented at the Dietitians Australia conference this week (14-16 August) in Adelaide.
