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Research commissioned by spread brand Flora and conducted by the University of Leeds has revealed that only 1.6% of children’s lunchboxes are meeting school food nutritional standards.

The report follows on from Flora’s 2006 report, which found that 1.1% of children’s lunchboxes met the standards, highlighting an improvement of just 0.5% in 10 years.

Flora also revealed that only one in five lunchboxes (17%) contain any vegetables or salad. However, progress has been made with the majority of lunchboxes meeting protein and vitamin C standards.

The study found that 46% of lunchboxes contain sugary drinks, a reduction of 15% from 2006, and the majority contain sweet and savoury snacks (52% - 60%).

The Children’s Food Trust’s head of research, Jo Nicholas, responded: “There’s a wealth of evidence to suggest we’re underestimating the contribution of packed lunches to our country’s child obesity problem.

“We’ve got to do more to help parents and schools with this. Putting a packed lunch policy in place can be tough, but every school allowing packed lunches needs one if we’re going make life easier for parents and give kids a consistent message. It’s a step we were looking for in the government’s childhood obesity strategy and we’re disappointed not to see it in there.”

Flora is now calling on the government to raise awareness and do more to ensure that nutritional standards for school food are being met in packed lunches by partnering with Sharon Hodgson MP, the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on School Food chair.

Hodgson, said: “The research highlights the need for more action to be taken on food put in children’s packed lunches, something which the School Food APPG has recently called for.

“Despite positive moves with regards to the food provided as part of a school meal, food brought in by children in their packed lunches is lagging behind. Therefore we need more action to be taken if we want to see positive changes occur.”