Providing school meals to students has a direct positive impact on children’s health and influences dietary habits. SchoolFood4Change recently carried out a mapping study that identifies this as one of its main conclusions. The study explored existing school food systems, school food provisions and the procurement methods that 17 municipalities use for catering in 12 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden).
Most schools in the studied municipalities provide lunch every day. However, countries organise this in very different ways. Only half of the studied countries have food policies in place either at the national or regional level, while slightly more than half work with sustainability requirements in public procurement. On the other hand, except for the Czech Republic and Hungary, all countries have dietary guidelines in place.
how school meals are organised
Schools and municipalities structure school-meal financing in two different ways, broadly speaking. In schools with an open kitchen, the school or municipality usually covers labour costs. In this case the meal costs consist only of the food ingredients. Alternatively, when schools outsource the service to a private catering company, the costs include food ingredients and other expenses, such as transportation, electricity and equipment. Most schools in the study make use of this second option.
Over half of the studied municipalities have centralised their food and catering services procurement and usually conduct the procurement for their schools and kindergartens. Only 28% of municipalities have a decentralised system in which each institution individually purchases its food and catering service. Centralised purchases tend to be larger, exceeding national or EU financial thresholds. Furthermore, public food procurement is becoming increasingly digitalised.
School food and procurement processes
Half of the municipalities have digitalised their entire procurement process, and they are also increasingly practicing sustainable food procurement. Sustainability criteria vary from asking suppliers to provide organic food and plant-based options to requiring various labels and carbon emissions transportation. The uptake of sustainable procurement is however hindered by a lack of expertise in implementing sustainable criteria and concerns about sustainability criteria falling outside of the legal framework. The most widespread barrier to the provision of school meals is however the cost of sustainable alternatives or a meal’s fixed cost, which does not allow for many changes.
The study sits within the broader context of SchoolFood4Change, which is working to encourage a shift towards sustainable, healthy diets is through the Whole School Food Approach, a holistic place-based model that is taking schools as the starting point for transformation. The project has so far conducted on-site training sessions in seven of the 12 Member States to build knowledge on the approach and to bring together stakeholders to talk about school meals.
Find the full study here.