Free school meal allowance not enough for healthy food

Students from lower-income backgrounds are struggling to buy healthy school lunches with free school meal allowances, a new study by the University of York has found.

For the study, researchers trained 42 pupils aged between 11 and 15 from seven UK schools as “citizen scientists”, who then collected information from their schools over a week. They detailed what food was available, what lunch they bought and whether they felt full for the rest of the school day. They were given a lunch budget of between £2.15 and £2.70 per day, depending on the free school meal (FSM) allowance at their school.

The findings of the study reveal that the allowance often limited pupil’s choices to meal deals, with many, often healthier, non-meal-deal items financially out of reach.

The pupils rarely purchased fresh fruit, salad and vegetables and in four of the schools, no fruit was bought during the study.

The research also found that short lunch breaks led to the citizen scientists feeling under pressure to “grab and go”, making decisions that may not have been the healthiest option.

The citizen scientists highlighted the small portion sizes of meals, and, because in most schools they were not able to access their school meal allowance before lunch, how they were often hungry during the morning break.

Dr Sundus Mahdi from the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, said: “We found that non-meal-deal items were generally healthier, but more expensive. This is very relevant in terms of what we are seeing now with the cost of living and inflation that healthier food just tends to be more expensive.

“Unfortunately, the portion sizes given to some pupils were not enough to sustain them during the school day. There was actually one participant that said that during the week they actually brought a packed lunch with them in addition to their free school meal allowance, because it just wasn’t filling them up.”

In England, around 1.9 million children are eligible for free school meals. To be eligible, a household must earn less than £7,400 after tax and before benefits.

FSM allowance needs to be increased to allow students to buy more filling meals that sustain them through the school day, the researchers say. They are also calling for an amendment to the school food standard so that schools have to include two portions of vegetables with every meal.