The problem with ultra-processed foods

How can schools cut down their reliance on ultra-processed food and embed a good food culture into all aspects of school life? The Soil Association shares some ideas

When you think about what the average child in the UK eats in a day, what might that look like? Maybe they start the day with a bowl of cereal – some multigrain hoops or honey nut cornflakes with banana perhaps – then at break time they enjoy a fruit yoghurt or cereal bar. At lunchtime, they choose a breaded chicken burger with oven chips and some salad on the side; their friend goes for pasta with tomato sauce from a jar. After school they walk past the local corner shop on their way home and buy some crisps and a fizzy drink to keep them going until teatime. 

None of this sounds too bad, it’s mainly staple foods with some fruit and veg thrown in, and most children enjoy a treat at the end of the school day. But most of these foods are ultra-processed.

What does ultra-processed mean?

Ultra-processed foods are industrially manufactured products. They’re often soft and palatable and typically lack whole
ingredients and dietary fibre whilst being excessively sugary, fatty or salty. They’re categorised according to the NOVA system, which ranges from NOVA1 – things like fresh meat and vegetables – to NOVA4, ultra-processed foods which are ready-to-eat and made using ingredients and processes you wouldn’t find in the typical home kitchen, including things like flavoured porridge oats and cheese puff crisps. Between those extremes, the NOVA2 category includes ingredients like oil and butter, which are processed to make them suitable for use in a kitchen, and NOVA3 includes foods processed by adding salt, oil, sugar or other NOVA1 and NOVA2 ingredients. This includes tinned fish, cheese or fruits in syrup.

Excess consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in childhood influences lifetime food choices. This can lead to poor health outcomes, increasing the risk of developing conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer later in life. Currently, UPFs make up 67 per cent of daily energy intake for 14-year-olds in the UK. 

How ultra-processed food became the norm

Walk into any UK supermarket and you won’t have to look hard to find a plethora of ultra-processed foods. You’ll see bread which includes E282, E472e, E471 and E481 as ingredients, yoghurt with guar gum, citric acid and potassium sorbate, and cereals with invert sugar syrup, caramelised sugar syrup and annatto norbixin. Often, the traffic light system used for nutrition on packaged food will show them as healthy choices. 

When talking about a healthy diet, there’s a tendency to focus on macro- and micronutrients, things like proteins, fats, sugars and fibre. This is scientifically accurate and can be helpful in some contexts, but it can also cause problems. Whether ultra-processed food is labelled as high in vitamins or low in fat, it’s often so divorced from fresh, whole food and means children miss out on the joy and health benefits of crunchy vegetables or chewy bread. 

Recently Rob Percival, our head of food policy, gave evidence to the House of Lords, describing the current ‘policy paradigm’ within which government thinks: “If we throw in some fibre over there and squeeze out a few calories over here we might be healthy. And it’s not working.”

Instead, he urged for a focus on whole foods and for the government to act on its commitment to support a whole school approach to good food. This was detailed in the 2022 Levelling Up White Paper: “The UK Government will promote accountability and transparency of school food arrangements by encouraging schools to complete a statement on their school websites, which sets out their ‘whole school approach’ to food. The UK Government’s intention is that this will become mandatory when schools can do this effectively.” No action has yet been made.

Moving away from diets dominated by ultra-processed foods will be a difficult, but not impossible, undertaking. Children are constantly bombarded with advertising from huge food companies, from fast food to fizzy drinks, and often the most accessible and convenient food is ultra-processed – think ready meals, cheap bread and cereal. It’s not hard to see why they’ve become the go-to for children, who are particularly susceptible to glossy marketing campaigns from big brands who engineer their products to be the most addictive combination of sugar, fat and salt. 

It starts at school

Children in the UK spend most of their time outside of the home at school. This time should be full of fresh, whole and healthy foods. It should be a haven from the toxic messaging from our broken food system, where children can enjoy good food and parents can feel confident that their children are eating well. 

Instead, too many children are faced with subpar school meals full of ultra-processed foods and bland flavours. This isn’t the fault of caterers and schools, who are doing their utmost to provide good food within tiny budgets and tight timeframes, but of a wider disregard for what our children are eating. 

To solve this, a whole school approach to food is needed. The success of this approach can be seen across the hundreds of schools enrolled with Food for Life, where good food is the norm from canteen to classroom. 

Across the UK, Food for Life schools grow and cook their own food, visit local farms, train their teachers to deliver cooking activities and work with their catering teams to ensure what’s being served is freshly prepared and high quality. This approach works because it embeds a good food culture into all aspects of school life. Children are much more likely to eat and enjoy fresh fruit and veg if they’ve grown it themselves or engaged in a sensory food session. This has ripple effects throughout the wider school community too, with pupils at Food for Life schools eating more fruit and veg at home. 

At the same time, hundreds of caterers are Food for Life Served Here certified. This means they’re serving food which is freshly prepared, sustainably sourced and free of additives. Committing to this standard of food is not only beneficial to health but also to the planet. UPFs have a big environmental impact: compared to locally grown, whole foods, they use too much energy, land and water whilst creating unnecessary waste through single-use plastics.

So where do we start? 

Schools and caterers can enrol with Food for Life to begin their good food journey and bring high quality, freshly prepared food to their schools. By following a proven framework with support from experts, you can see a food culture change happen in real time. 

We’ve also asked our experts for some easy wins that can be implemented in the immediate term, see below:

Easy swaps to reduce ultra-processed foods at school:

• Passata or tinned tomatoes instead of jarred sauces
• Natural yoghurt with fruit instead of flavoured yoghurts
• Cheddar cheese instead of long-life cream cheese
• Cook haricot beans with onions, garlic and tinned tomatoes instead of baked beans
• Make cakes and tray bakes on site instead of using a packet mix
• Seasoned fresh fish instead of fish fingers
• Seasoned chicken breast or drumsticks instead of chicken nuggets
• Lentils instead of meat-replacement mince