However, even without sustainability, the list of expected outcomes from a lunch programme is long. Is that plausible? I think so — if the programme is designed to achieve such results. Food lies at the centre of our physical, mental and social wellbeing. A well-nourished population is the foundation of a productive, achieving, healthy population.
Two concerns are apparent as the programme gets into full swing this year — who provides the food and is the programme being measured on whether it delivers on its promises?
Most schools don't have on-site facilities to make lunches, so the rush is on for contracts with external providers. The initial contracts went mostly to large catering firms, but this raises doubts about whether the "local school food ecosystems" needed to bring the multiple potential benefits to communities can be provided. Big business is more transactional (get funding, feed kids) than locally transformative.
Transformation is needed for food systems, because at the moment they are designed to provide livelihoods and profits by feeding people who can afford it, while also creating enormous harm to environments and health. Food systems can deliver on health, equity, environmental sustainability and prosperity all at once if designed for these outcomes. The school programme is potentially a game-changer for local food systems.
Pre-Covid, about one in five children lived in households with moderate to severe food insecurity, meaning the family often lacked money for food. This is disgraceful for a wealthy country and the lockdown shot these numbers through the roof. Multiple ad hoc programmes tried to address the problem of hungry kids, but we have no idea how successful they were because they were never evaluated. In some developing countries, unmonitored school-feeding programmes, aiming to alleviate undernutrition, contributed to obesity issues.
The second of my concerns is the lack of programme evaluation. With high potential for benefit (and some harms), a long list of expected impacts and a short funding period (two years), it needs close evaluation before the Government decides to continue, extend or modify the programme. The evaluation of the pilot in 42 schools only just started when Covid hit, but needs to be expanded to match the huge expansion in size and expected outcomes. If you want to know if things work, you measure them.
The need for national food-systems transformation is so urgent that we should grab the opportunity Ka Ora Ka Ako provides, to show how well-designed food ecosystems can deliver in multiple ways at the local level.
Boyd Swinburn is Professor of Population Nutrition and Global Health at the University of Auckland
