Currently, school cooks are required to follow strict guidelines on fat, sugar, and salt, content, and while these rules are well intentioned, lunch staff should be allowed to run the school canteen in a way where pupils eat very well during most of the week (like only having fruit for dessert and eating plant-based meals), but on Fridays, they can have a treat (such as a high-quality cut of meat, with cake for dessert). The ingredients should also be high-quality, and they should be selected by the school. I am making this point because, at least in Aberdeenshire, contracts for ingredients for school meals are awarded by the council, without consultation of canteen staff, and also, only one contract per ingredient can be awarded, meaning that small farms are automatically disqualified from these contracts. Small, local, farmers supplying schools also helps to reduce the food miles associated with buying from large, centralised farms. My final and most important point is that the food must be tasty, because a lot of people are under the illusion that taste has to be sacrificed for a food to be healthy, but that is simply not true: the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest diets in the world, yet is also one of the tastiest diets in the world. A lot of the health problems here stem from people wanting to enjoy food, but not knowing that healthy food can also be tasty.
This content is created by the open source Your Priorities citizen engagement platform designed by the non profit Citizens Foundation