Your article showed the variation across Europe in school food (Pizza, plum cake and pickled red onion: how school lunches look across Europe, 13 October). Our European Research Council-funded study examined the difference school meals made to children aged 11 to 15 in low-income families in the UK, Norway and Portugal (not covered in the article).
While Norway does not provide school lunches, Portugal provides all children with nutritious meals that are regulated according to national standards (fresh vegetable soup, meat and fish on alternate days, brown bread, and fruit or – occasionally – jelly). In Portugal, school meals play an important part in mitigating the effects of poverty on children’s diets via a three-tier payment system that results in all children from low-income families being entitled to a free school meal (FSM). This is in stark contrast to England, where around a third of children growing up in poverty are not entitled to a FSM under its stringent means-testing system.
The young people we interviewed in Portugal had some complaints about the meals, but their mothers – the primary managers of poverty in families – were grateful. In contrast, in England, some young people who were not entitled to FSMs went without food at school, and some would hide in the library at lunchtime to avoid watching others eat. Some of those receiving FSMs said the allowance was not enough to fill them up, or described being publicly identified and shamed by being told they could not choose certain items from the cafeteria. Unsurprisingly, given standardised meals, none of the Portuguese children described being made to feel different.
The Portuguese case shows the urgent need for the reform of our school food policy and funding. All children in state education should be entitled to a nutritious and inclusive meal at lunchtime.
Prof Rebecca O’Connell
University of Hertfordshire
Prof Julia Brannen
University College London
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
