School meal provision was made compulsory by the 1944 Education Act. This made it a statutory duty rather than optional entitlement for local authorities.

These provisions were removed by the 1980 Education Act. The act removed the requirement to provide school meals of any nutritional standard. The only statutory requirement was to provide meals to eligible children of families on income support. Additionally, school meals were opened up to Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT), obliging local authorities to open services to private sector competition and award contracts to the most ‘competitive’ offer.

In the last few years, attention has been refocused on health issues, with a particular focus on obesity. Public interest in the nutritional quality of meals served to children was sparked off in February 2005 by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, bringing the issue into the May 2005 general election.

With this came a new set of government initiatives, including:

• a pledge of 50p per day per primary child (60p per secondary child) for ingredients
• a new School Food Trust
• new minimum nutritional standards, and
• powers for OFSTED to inspect school meals.

The findings are the outcome of an inquiry into child poverty by the cross-party committee. It found some children would rather forgo a meal than risk humiliation from peers.

It also found that the aspirations of children in poverty are the same as those from better off families when they are seven or eight years old, but by 10 or 11 their aspirations are significantly lower.

This represents an increase over 2009-2010 of 2.7 percentage points in the primary sector and 1.8 percentage points in the secondary sector. This equates to approximately 173,000 more pupils taking school lunch in 2010-2011.

Average school lunch prices were £1.88 in the Local Authority-catered primary sector and £1.98 in the secondary sector. This represents a price increase of 3% for primary and 2% for secondary on the preceding year.

Voluntary industry restrictions on the salt content of processed foods cut ill health from cardiovascular disease by almost one per cent, Australian researchers say. But the health benefits could be dramatically greater if the government imposed limits, with ill health from cardiovascular disease falling by as much as 18 per cent.

These are the findings of a pilot project in Glasgow where pupils at eight schools were kept in the grounds and offered activities alongside healthy food, according to the BBC.

More children ate school meals and staff reported less truancy and improved safety, as a result. Staff reported a reduction lateness for class while pupils said there was less pressure to go out even if they did not want to and less teasing and bullying.

Sunday lunch is an iconic British meal but filling it with salt puts both adults and children at risk of developing high blood pressure.

said Professor Graham MacGregor, a leading expert in cardiovascular medicine and chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH), which carried out the research.

This decision was made after a judge ruled that Tower Hamlets Council “acted unlawfully” for allowing a takeaway restaurant to open within 500 yards from a school gate.

In March 2010, Waltham Forest Council became the first local authority in the UK to ban fast food outlets opening within 500 metres of schools, leisure centres and parks. The ban was supported by a drive to improve the quality of school meals and ensure all pupils receive at least one healthy meal a day.

In the same period, childhood obesity levels dropped from 22.8% of year six pupils in 2007/08 to 20.6% in 2008/09. More than half of the 50 UK councils are revising their planning policies or are in the process of reviewing them.

Councils currently taking action include Birmingham, Bristol, Barking and Dagenham.

Many schools have succeeded in increasing the take-up of free school meals by giving better advice and support to parents. But less thought has been given to providing advice to families whose incomes are low but who are not entitled to free school meals.

The report, “Food in schools — progress in implementing the new standards”, shows that some of these parents have to budget carefully to pay for school meals. Families on lower incomes, with a lack of transport, may also be limited to a smaller range of cheap food that is available locally but not sufficiently healthy.

Ofsted found that the schools it visited adopted a variety of approaches to extending pupils’ understanding of nutritious food. These included healthy eating clubs to learn about the importance of a balanced diet.

A Department of Health spokesperson said:

Restaurants, quick service restaurants, takeaways, cafés, pubs, sandwich shops and staff restaurants would sign-up to put calorie labelling on their eat in and take away menus from September this year.

As part of the rules, companies would also need to reduce salt in a wide range of foods to achieve specific targets by 2012. For example, 100g of pizza will be required to have an average of 1g of salt and 100g of pasta sauce (excluding pesto) will need to have on average 0.83g of salt.

The third commitment for food service operators will be the removal of trans fats “once and for all” by the end of the year. Trans-fats have a similar effect on blood cholesterol as saturated fats — they raise the type of cholesterol in the blood that increases the risk of heart disease.

This move is happening much faster than anticipated because the government believes it is more cost-effective to the taxpayer than holding a consultation to introduce legislation.

The “Let’s Get Cooking network” says more than half of people taking part in cooking clubs for families say they eat a healthier diet after being taught how to cook balanced meals through Let’s Get Cooking.

Research revealed that 59% of club members said they were eating more healthily after their involvement with the programme, while 90% reported that they had used their new cooking skills at home.

Let’s Get Cooking works with organisations to deliver healthy cooking programmes and is led by the School Food Trust. The Trust is delivering a £20 million school-based cooking club programme for the Big Lottery Fund.