Member

The committee heard from school caterers that they could not provide a meal, even within the current standard, with the money they had available to do so. Parents and pupils told us that they could not get a healthy meal with the money provided by the free school meal allowance; one example was that they could get a turkey wrap but not any salad or fruit to go with it. School meals provide the Government with a powerful lever to address the fact that only 0.5% of children in households earning less than £10,000 per year meet the dietary recommendations for fruit and vegetable consumption. That is partly because healthier foods tend to be more expensive and less accessible in some parts of cities. The consequence is that, by year 6, almost one-third of children in the most deprived areas eat a lot of cheaper, less healthy food and are therefore living with obesity, compared to 13.1% in the least deprived areas.