Packed lunches do not meet nutritional standards set for school meals, claims survey

The research for the Food Standards Agency shows that parents are filling lunchboxes with crisps, sweets, and sugary drinks rather than fruit and vegetables at the same time as the Government has introduced strict nutritional standards for school meals. A team of researchers from Leeds University examined the lunchboxes of 1,300 schoolchildren and has just published their findings in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The results are significant because half of UK schoolchildren bring in a packed lunch each day. The children in the study were aged between eight and nine and all took a packed lunch to school at least one day a week, with almost 90% eating a packed lunch every day. Leeds University lead researcher Charlotte Evans said over a quarter of the children had a packed lunch containing sweets, savoury snacks, and sugary drinks - things banned under rules on healthy prepared meals for local authority schools in England, which started to come into force in 2006. Only one in five packed lunches contained any vegetables or salad, and even though half the children were provided with fruit, it was the least likely food in their boxes to be eaten, while confectionery was nearly always eaten. Only 1.1% of the children's packed lunches met all the required nutritional standards for school meals, which include keeping the contents low in fat and salt and high in essential vitamins and nutrients. She said: "It reflects the typical diet of the whole population. Most adults would also have crisps or a chocolate bar and not enough fruit or veg in their lunchbox. "There are many initiatives going on to improve our diet and exercise, but change won't happen overnight and banning certain foods from lunchboxes could backfire. "We've seen it with sweets, when schools have banned them. The children end up bringing more cakes and biscuits with them instead." Prue Leith, who chairs the School Food Trust, said she was not surprised by the findings, which chimed with other research. "I feel for parents because when you're packing a lunchbox it's almost impossible to resist the temptation to include a treat. It's a way of showing your love. "But we're trying to educate children about healthy eating and I'm sure they get plenty of chocolate and cakes at home, so what I'd like to see is not a ban but school's adopting healthy lunchbox policies. "I think parents would actually prefer a school rule on this because it makes it easier to explain to their children why there are no crisps and cakes."