Planet Friendly School Meals: An Evidence-Driven Framework for Changing the Lunch Table
Around the world, some 418 million children tuck into state-funded meals at school, five days a week. School meals programs make up the largest proportion of the global public food system and provide a unique opportunity to both improve diet quality and act as a catalyst for large-scale food systems transformation. The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition’s Planet-Friendly School Meals initiative was created to support countries in adopting or switching to planet-friendly school meals.
Planet-Friendly School Meals is a global research collaboration led by the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, the independent institute of the School Meals Coalition (SMC) of 108 member states committed to improving the quality and accessibility of school meals. The Research Consortium was established to support SMC members with evidence-based policy insights on the most effective approaches to national school meals programs—working with over 1,100 academics and practitioners from roughly 330 organizations across 110 countries.
The Planet-Friendly School Meals initiative explores the potential of school meals to support the development of human capital while encouraging sustainable and healthy food consumption and education, and supporting local agroecological practices—driving much-needed food systems transformation globally. This led to the development of the 2023 white paper “School Meals and Food Systems: Rethinking the Consequences for Climate, Environment, Biodiversity, and Food Sovereignty.” Launched at COP28, its insights have been officially endorsed by the Norwegian, Kenyan, and Sierra Leonean governments.
Planet-Friendly School Meals builds on the key findings of the white paper to estimate the impact of school meal policy changes on both health and the environment in low- to high-income countries. The initiative, with the support of the SMC and access to a truly global network of policy and research leaders, claims to be uniquely positioned to leverage the power of planet-friendly school meals, raising their status and supporting countries in enabling change.
The initiative’s modeling and mapping tools are designed to be relevant globally while enabling flexibility to incorporate specific local conditions. Policymakers, researchers, and funders will be able to use these tools to create their own set of scenarios for planet-friendly school meals using locally relevant data. Work is underway in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda as a first set of countries to test the tools. The initiative also developed a theoretical framework that identifies the key policy changes that would have the most significant influence on the planet’s health.
By changing school menus to include fewer meat products, serving diverse, nutrient-dense, resilient meals with low environmental impact, and reducing food waste, the initiative’s modeling analyses revealed that relatively modest changes to standard school menus can reduce negative environmental impacts by 26-43%. Secondly, school meals are a significant contributor to plastic waste, through reliance on packaged food items and single-use service ware; changing packaging could also have a significant positive environmental impact. Third, switching to clean cooking to prepare school meals using renewable energy would have a significant positive impact on climate change, land use, and health outcomes. Fourth, consistent and action-oriented food education can empower future generations by fostering healthier and more sustainable food habits at a critical age.
Though still in the early stages, the initiative asserts that supporting national policymakers in SMC member states to implement planet-friendly policies would bring enormous benefits to both people and planetary health.
Read more about Planet-Friendly School Meals.
Written by Sarah Souli
Photo provided by the initiative.
