Only one in 100 children's packed lunches is as healthy as school meals

Published on Tuesday 12 January 2010 21:29

JUST one in 100 packed lunches made for children meets nutritional standards set for school meals, research shows.

The study found that lunch-boxes are being filled with crisps, sweets and sugary drinks, instead of healthier options such as vegetables, fruit and dairy products.

Campaigners and researchers said the result, while shocking, was not surprising, as children increasingly rejected healthy foods in favour of the popular snacks advertised and targeted at them.

About half UK schoolchildren eat a packed lunch from home – equating to 5.5 billion lunches eaten every year.

The researchers, from the University of Leeds, examined the contents of 1,300 lunch-boxes taken to school by pupils aged eight and nine in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Only 1.1 per cent of the lunches assessed met all the nutritional standards required of meals prepared in schools.These guidelines ban schools providing sweets, crisps and artificially sweetened drinks, but there are no rules for meals brought from home.

The standards for school meals also say that lunches must contain protein-rich and low-fat starchy foods, vegetables, fruit and dairy products.

Researcher Charlotte Evans said the same standards applied to schools across the UK.

The researchers found that, in the packed lunches, only one in ten children had sandwiches containing vegetables, while a further 10 per cent had a separate portion of vegetables.

More than one in four children (27 per cent) had a packed lunch containing sweets, savoury snacks and sugary drinks.

A further four out of ten had sweets and snacks but no sugary drink. Only 8.1 per cent had none of these items in their lunchbox.

The researchers, writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that the items least likely to be eaten by children were fruit, while the most likely was confectionery.

Ms Evans said that, while school meals had to contained a portion of fruit, a vegetable portion, dairy food, low-fat starchy food such as potatoes or bread, and protein-rich food, there were no equivalent standards for packed lunches.

She said: "We are worried about this widening gap between packed lunches and school meals. Roughly half of the children in the UK have a school meal and half have packed lunches."

Ms Evans added it was not possible to say with certainty what health impact the packed lunches would have on children when they grow up, but she said: "We know from studies in adults that if your diet is poor, if it is low in fruit and vegetables and high in saturated fat, salt and sugar, there are long-term health implications, and in adulthood that means increases in obesity, heart disease and some cancers."

Prue Leith, chairwoman of the School Food Trust, admitted that she was "not really surprised" by the results.

"I have never met a mum who could resist putting in a little bit of chocolate or a cake or a packet of crisps," she said.

"When you pack a lunch for a child, you are trying to remind them that you love them, and so the little treat is in there."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Packed lunches provided by parents for their children are exempt from the Nutritional Requirements for food and drink in schools (Scotland) Regulations 2008, as parents should be free to make their own decisions.

"There are, however, many resources available online offering advice on healthy living to help parents to decide on nutritious family eating."

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