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New data published by the Department for Education shows how many children are taking free school meals and the scale of the opportunity to influence how young children eat through the universal infant free school meals scheme, The Children’s Food Trust says.

The Children's Food Trust's head of research, Jo Nicholas, said: "It's absolutely fantastic to see that 85.5% of all children in reception, Year 1 and Year 2 - more than 1.6m children - are taking up the offer of a free meal at school. That's most of the infant school population, and a huge opportunity to start early and help influence the way every child eats for life.

"As we'd expect, the universal scheme seems to be having a positive effect on children who would qualify for free school meals at infant school anyway - now that it's the norm to have a school lunch, more of them are actually choosing to take up their meal now.

"But around one in ten of those children still aren't taking up their meal and that's a real concern - we don't want any child living in poverty to miss out on a nutritious meal at school.

“Not only does it help improve their focus in class, but it can be their only proper meal of the day - particularly important when so many families are struggling to make their food budgets stretch.

"There are still many reasons why families don't register for free school meals, and why children of all ages don't always take them up once they've registered - that's why it's so important that schools get the help and encouragement they need to do something about it.

"Ultimately, this is about getting the school meal experience right so that every child wants to have school meals - whether they pay or get them free."

Carrieanne Bishop, national chair of LACA, said: “The statistics from the Department for Education are hugely encouraging and stand testament to the huge amounts of work done by caterers over the last two years. An uptake rate of 85.5% among infants is a massive achievement but we must work hard to ensure that all children take advantage of the free, healthy food that is on offer to them.

"A good diet has a range of positive effects and instilling this in children at an early age is key to producing a generation of healthy adults. Universal Infant Free School Meals is an excellent starting point for this and we hope that parents everywhere are convinced of its worth.”