Guest Post: Reflections on the Food in Schools Programme

A guest post by a reader:

I listened recently to an interview on The Platform between Michael Laws  and Prof Boyd Swinburn speaking about the Food in Schools Programme.

The interview was conducted respectfully notwithstanding totally different perspectives.

To my mind (and lets accept my centre-right instincts at the outset) Prof Swinburn gave the game away towards the end of the interview.  What I mean by that is that after giving all the expected nutritional arguments for the programme he then resorted to supplementary benefits like freeing busy parents from having to prepare food in the morning and creating employment for food preparers.

To which I can only say “are you kidding me?”.  

Do intelligent people who think about such things really believe that the taxpayer should spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year (much of it wasted) to feed children, with employment creation and an easier morning school-run as part justification?  To answer my own question, they clearly do.  And the reason why, and also the reason why I say Prof Swinburn gave the game away, is because their thinking is ideological.  Like much of the school food, their reasoning is pap and rooted in assumptions which place no value on prudence, self-reliance, and efficiency.

So let me approach the problem from my own perspective, and let me state as part of this a number of assumptions which you may or may not believe but which to me are at least arguable.

First Thing: Food in schools can only ever be a partial solution to wider nutritional and family issues.  

A simple point by which I mean that if a family genuinely is in high need then one free lunch a day for five days a week for that part of the year that a child goes to school will only ever partially meet the need.  And I think most supporters of the programme would agree with that.  So to that extent the programme is ad hoc and the debate about its scope is always about the degree of ad hocness.

Second Thing: A genuinely hungry child who is impacted by that hunger to the extent it inhibits school participation, will seek out food.  

When a child is hungry the type of food is going to be less a concern than the fact of the food.  An assertion yes, but to my mind a reasonable one.

Third Thing: A child that is not genuinely hungry or comes from a family that could make other choices will to some extent regulate the demand by their response to what is provided.

By which I mean if you serve burgers and chips discretionary users may well take up the offer, but if you serve something more nutritious and less attractive they may not.

Corollary: If our programme is inherently ad hoc, but is highly likely to capture real need, and can be framed to exclude discretionary choices, then let’s do exactly that! 

Surely the solution here is simple, highly nutritious, relatively low-cost food made available freely to those who seek it but not so attractive as to create significant discretionary demand, with the limited objective (as is the case now) of to some extent meeting the needs in a child’s life?  

I am no expert but what about milk and bananas for every one who wants them but not provided universally within a school?  Or simple well-made sandwiches high on nutrition and low on luxury?  Provide them on request but freely; perhaps more than once during the day.  Choose practical and easily-shifted products that minimise cost.  

Many of us grew up on peanut butter or marmite sandwiches, raisins and a quarter of cheddar cheese all set out in a lunch box with compartments for each.  I am not advocating for that necessarily because I dont know the nutritional benefits of that combination.  But surely it is not beyond the minds of people like Prof Swinburn to step out of their ideological swamp where big is always better and inclusiveness always trumps managing cost and think of simple, practical, minimalist solutions which give lots of bang for not much buck?  Especially when appropriate design will exclude that part of the recipient group that doesn’t actually need or want the service.

The counter-argument will be that because people are poor we only want to give them yucky food.  Which is nonsense of course because I am suggesting the opposite.  If nutritional value means desirable then I want to give kids desirable food.  But I do think that using the attributes of food to distinguish between those who genuinely need to have their diet supplemented and those who don’t really care is sensible and an acknowledgement of the fact there is ultimately no such thing as a free lunch.