School Food in England - Two Decades of Lessons

 Twenty years ago, I completed a Master’s in Nutrition and took up a role as ‘Fit for Life Coordinator’. My job? Implement obesity interventions across a secondary school and its primary feeder schools in a deprived area of the West Midlands. This was during the Blair government era, when funding for public health and education felt ambitious - if sometimes fleeting.

Just a year earlier, I’d worked as an Out-of-School Hours Learning Manager, helping schools across England set up breakfast and cooking clubs. I wrote practical guides, visited classrooms and saw first-hand the joy of kids learning through food.

Then I stepped into my new role and into children’s daily routines.

The Food Trail

I followed students on their journeys to school, observing their choices. A familiar, concerning pattern emerged:

• Early starts, no breakfast at home.

• Confectionery and fizzy drinks picked up from corner shops en route.

• Some made it to breakfast clubs (if available). Many fasted until break time.

• The mid-morning toast queue? Always long. But that quick fix often replaced lunch altogether.

• After school, hunger hit again: chips, fried chicken, more sweets.

• By dinner, the day’s nutrition had already gone off the rails.

One child even told us their favourite snack was a donner kebab.

At the time, students were still allowed off-site at lunchtime. It became clear: there was a growing gap between hunger, food availability and nutrition.

Building Something Better

In response, the school I worked with did something bold: they hired a chef from a golf club to produce proper, nutritious meals. We adopted a whole-school food policy, integrating nutrition and health into the curriculum.

We formed a SNAG (School Nutrition Action Group) involving parents and introduced vibrant physical activity programmes - fencing, dance, cricket. There were growing clubs, cooking sessions and regular breakfast clubs.

We even ran city food tours. Children visited wholesale markets, explored food branding at Selfridges and took part in stir-fry and smoothie workshops at Wagamama (let’s call the brand ‘healthier fast food’). An umami-tasting session turned into a full-blown sensory adventure.

Beyond school, we worked with communities. I led Food Interest Groups with Bangladeshi, Gujarati, Caribbean families and women’s organisations. We held health screenings at football grounds to engage more men.

I still remember delivering a session on diabetes in a science class. When I explained the varying risks across ethnic groups, the stunned expressions on those 13-year-olds’ faces stayed with me. They’ll be 33 now. I often wonder what choices they’ve made since.

Start. Stop. Repeat.

When funding ended, so did the activities. Then came the Food in Schools initiative. Then the Healthy Schools Scheme. Start, stop. Then Jamie Oliver’s campaign.

A business I worked with even took off after that campaign, supplying healthier chicken options to schools. Meanwhile, Radio 4 presenters and polished London voices debated the nation’s health. And yet, here we are: with UK children among the unhealthiest in Europe.

What I Saw Next

Last year, I bumped into an Academy headteacher at my sports club. After chatting about school food, he invited me to visit his Trust’s schools warning me about the state of their menus.

These are schools in low-income areas, mainly white and working-class. What I saw was worse than expected. Even though I was expecting it to be bad.

I’ve visited schools in India and seen the Mid-Day Meal Programme in action. I’ve travelled with the Horizon 2020 Food Trails Programme to Milan, Bergamo and Copenhagen. In all of those places (including India), the poorest children are eating better than many of our own.

Over a decade ago, I co-wrote a guide on healthier, sustainable public sector catering with Professor Louis Levy and Jessica Mitchell for PHE. We featured case studies from outstanding caterers in schools, hospitals, care homes and prisons. Those same examples e.g ‘Food for Life’ and ‘The Clink’ are still being referenced today.

We already know what good looks like. So why isn’t it everywhere?

It’s Bigger Than Food

I believe it comes down to class.

In France, quality bread isn’t just for the middle classes, it’s valued by everyone. Local organic supermarkets offer reduced rates for low-income families. There’s an unspoken understanding that good food should be accessible and middle class professionals don’t assume others won’t care about it. In other words, there’s a sense of food solidarity.

Here in the UK, feeding children daily confectionery barely raises an eyebrow. Suggest removing dessert from school menus and you're met with uproar. My colleagues in Italy and Denmark say that simply wouldn’t happen there. They don’t serve dessert at all.

And there’s something uncomfortable about healthy eating messages delivered by privileged voices with posh accents. The gap between ‘posh London’ and the rest of the UK? It’s massive. Sometimes it shuts the conversation down before it can even begin.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We need empowered, local leaders. People from within the communities themselves. We need to stop writing endless strategies and start backing the doers - the people who can roll up their sleeves and make things happen on the ground.

Change doesn’t need to be flashy. It needs to be consistent. Thoughtful. Rooted in real lives.

I’ve seen what’s possible. I saw it twenty years ago. And with the right energy, commitment and a bit of courage, we can build it again.

We need to support those who are committed to making real change, not for an MBE or a promotion, but because they’ve always been in it for the people they serve.  This is why I’m more than happy to support these Academy leads.