News

International School Meals Day was a success when it was organised for the first time last week and celebrated in the UK, America and across Europe in a bid to make people aware of the need for children globally to be served at least one healthy meal a day.

Plans for the day arose after a visit by LACA chair Anne Bull to see her counterpart in Denver, Colorado, US last July when it was felt that similar groups across the world should liaise to put forward advice and ideas to promote nutritional school meals.

“This first ISM Day is a platform to build on and expand,” Bull told a LACA seminar in Manchester on March 8th when more than 100 delegates heard that initial feedback showed 28 schools across Britain and America had connected up for the day and a quarter of a million tweets had been aired.

The seminar brought together professional school meal service and child well-being managers dealing with nutrition, hunger and obesity. It aimed to examine the impact of diet-related illnesses, the importance of school meals for youngsters’ health and measures being taken around the world to tackle health inequality.

Two expert speakers from America and Denmark highlighted their school policies in their countries aimed at giving children quality food daily with research showing that this meal intake improves learning skills and behaviour. Other actions are being taken to combat obesity.

The School Food and Hunger in Modern Society presentation on the work by Dr Katie Wilson of the National Food Service Management Institute at the University of Mississippi impressed delegates. And further details on nutrition, physical ability and obesity issues were detailed by Professor Bent Egberg of Aalborg University.

Alarming figures on child poverty were highlighted by Matthew Reed of the Children’s Society, while Manchester Labour MP Kate Green, impressed with the meals service after a school visit, felt that LACA members should continue their good work and promote it across the country “as illustrated with the campaigning force of this international day”.

Sylvia Cheater, an independent public health adviser, gave case studies of how initiatives and intervention in the north west region had made a difference by using an integrated approach to school services. She urged caterers to “come up over the parapet and shout about what you are achieving”.

Unilever marketing manager James Allred outlined his company’s target to provide 150,000 school meals to Indonesian children and how British schools could give backing to the campaign.

*A full report on the seminar event can be seen in the Spring 2013 issue of LACA School Caterer.