At first glance the Government’s new hot meals scheme may look like a progressive move towards stamping out food poverty in Ireland. For sure, this is a welcome aspect of the investment, and we should be thankful to be flush enough with cash to fund its rolling out at primary schools across the country.
But that’s where the good news ends. It turns out much of the food being delivered to the country’s children through the scheme is loaded with ultra-processed foods (UPFs), now known to cause a range of serious and life-threatening diseases of the body and mind.
These are the thoughts of Ruth Hegarty, a food policy consultant and lecturer in food policy at University College Cork, who looked into the nutrition content of the food offered through the scheme.
Her concerns were echoed recently by Prof Donal O’Shea, HSE national clinical lead for obesity. Speaking on RTÉ's Upfront with Katie Hannon, he said: “We should not be providing ultra-processed anything under this scheme.”
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The State was already paying over €120 million annually on the scheme, and before it was rolled out nationally it needed to be evaluated, he said.
Hegarty believes the Government has not done the necessary research, is short-sighted and missing out on an opportunity to build healthy individuals and prevent disease by creating a safe, sustainable and nutritious food system for our primary schools. Conor Purcell interviewed her via video call.
What are the main ingredient issues you’ve identified?
The striking thing about the food I looked at which is being provided by companies under this scheme is that the ingredients lists, where available, are very long, including startling numbers of additives and processing aids.
Much of these ingredients are things you would not recognise or ever have in your cupboard at home. This is one aspect which would characterise these foods – which are being served to our children every day – as ultra processed food (UPF).
[ Hot school meals programme expanded with 900 more locations joining schemeOpens in new window ]
One of the meals I looked at was chicken curry and rice. You would think that’s pretty straightforward, but there were around 75 ingredients in that particular meal. These include processing aids and additives like sodium citrate, dextrose, xylitol, maltodextrin and modified starch.
These kinds of additives, especially in their combination and through regular consumption, are disease-promoting and contribute to creating a UPF-based diet for children.
What’s really terrifying is that we are now institutionalising consumption of UPFs. With the roll-out of this scheme to every primary school, every child in the country is going to sit down and open a packaged meal with highly processed food, every day, five days a week. The scheme reinforces this idea that food comes packaged and labelled, and ready to eat, and that you have no interaction with where it comes from, how it was made, and who made it.
What diseases do UPFs cause?
There are a number of academic teams and scientists who’ve been looking at this for quite a few years at this stage. But most recently, this year, there was a really large umbrella review – a meta-analysis – about the health impacts of UPFs. That showed associations between UPF diets and obesity, various cancers, respiratory illness, cardiovascular illness, gastrointestinal issues, type two diabetes, and also higher risks of anxiety, mental health disorders and impacts on sleep, which is really interesting, given their prevalence nowadays.
Initially processing in the food industry was to preserve food, but now with ultra processed food it’s really to extend shelf life as much as possible, and make food more cheaply. But it is also formulated for texture and flavour to make the consumer want more of it. We now also have new evidence emerging that people with UPF diets will tend to eat addictively and excessively.
How does the new scheme work?
At the moment the schools are provided the funding by the Government and then tender out for the meal provider, at which point any food company or corporation can apply. So, basically, the way it’s working is that the schools apply to the Department of Social Protection, and once they’re approved to take part in the scheme the funds are transferred into a dedicated bank account, and away they go on their own procurement journey.
I really think we are missing an opportunity here to develop sustainable local food networks; using public procurement money to support local farmers and growers and provide nutritionally dense health-promoting food to our schools and beyond
Essentially, then, the view from the Department of Social Protection is that it’s up to the schools to make sure that the companies meet the nutritional standards. But primary schools in Ireland have no experience of catering or food procurement. Should they be expected to police child nutrition?
There is a nutrition standard for hot school meals provided by the Government, but there is no oversight of this. Tendering is left to the free market, and schools are expected to ensure the standard is met. That is to say, the schools choose the company, and the company decides on the ingredients. And that’s the kicker: there’s no legal mandate for companies to adhere to nutritional standards, which in themselves leave a lot to be desired. Essentially any food company, as long as they meet standard hygiene requirements as a food operator, could be a provider of school meals if they choose to target this new market.
What are the sustainability issues associated with the scheme?
One aspect that immediately stands out about this scheme is the issue of packaging. It’s not about building kitchens and cooking in large pots on premises and serving on plates. There are in fact no plates. The set-up of this scheme is that external companies provide meals to schools in individual single-use containers for each child daily.
So, in the midst of the climate and biodiversity crises, the Government have now introduced a new scheme which generates hundreds of thousands of single-use containers – daily – which need to be disposed of. I know some will say, oh well, cardboard is recyclable, but it’s not, because soiled cardboard containers don’t get recycled. The packaging also increases the per meal cost of the scheme, leaving less to spend on the food.
I really think we are missing an opportunity here to develop sustainable local food networks; using public procurement money to support local farmers and growers and provide nutritionally dense health-promoting food to our schools and beyond.
Of course, a per meal budget of €3.20 makes it challenging to source really good food, but we really need to explore different models and think about how best this money can be spent. The correct calculation of cost per meal needs to incorporate the additional health system cost years and decades down the line due to the increase in disease. Long-term thinking is needed here.
What changes are you calling for?
I think the very least that we can expect is that our children are protected when they are in school and that public money does no harm. If the Government is committed to spending this money on a universal free school meal scheme, I would call for an urgent re-evaluation of how we do this. There are many experts both in Ireland and abroad who have been looking at school meals and school food approaches for a long time who could be consulted, and some excellent models that could be followed.
We need to know why the Government has made this enormous spending decision without any significant discussion on the health and sustainability impacts. Why has this been left to the market with little or no oversight?
We also need to think about our values related to food and health, what we’re teaching about food, what messaging we give to children, and what attitudes we’re fostering.
I think that we really need to look very seriously at the value that we put on food and the value that we put on our diets, and where we want to go with that in the long term.
The reality is that the cost of doing this badly, and the cost of children embracing UPF diets, is just enormous. The Government is committing very significant money to the scheme. So why are we not more ambitious about how we spend it, and more ambitious about how we set up the future health of our children?
Dr Conor Purcell writes about science, society and culture and can be found on X @ConorPPurcell – some of his other articles are at cppurcell.tumblr.com
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