Professor Tim Spector calls for schools to stop serving ultra-processed foods
This would be a ‘dramatic shift’ as UPFs make up 61% of energy intake from school meals for primary schoolchildren, due to a variety of factors including tighter budgets and a lack of facilities.
Spector said: “I think it’s particularly important for our schoolchildren that they actually do get some real food.”
The Soil Association supports a bold UPF reduction target for public institutions. It urged the Government to roll this out alongside a ‘whole school approach’ that reconnects children with real food with cooking, growing, farm visits and sensory food education.
Rob Percival, head of food at the Soil Association, added: “The good work of nutrition scientists, who have revealed the complexity of food and the necessity of a healthy dietary pattern, is being twisted into a policy paradigm where if we just think that if we throw in some fibre over there and squeeze out a few calories over here we might be healthy. And it’s not working.
“Our children are growing up from a very young age on an ultra-processed diet. They are growing up on a diet that’s universally soft and sweet, in which certain physiological responses are encouraged and certain behaviour patterns are entrenched, like snacking.
“Their whole relationship with food is being disrupted and this is all by factors that lie beyond the nutrient composition of these foods. We need to look beyond the nutrients if we’re to understand what’s going on.”