Free school meals for all would help tackle child health crisis

In his critique of the school meals service, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver highlighted the positive role model Scotland offers. However, many people in Scotland would like to see us take a step further in ensuring all children have access to healthy school meals.

The launch of the consultation process for the Scottish Free School Meals Bill offers this opportunity. It proposes universal, free, nutritious school meals as a way to improve the long-term health of all our children.

A universal approach to school meals would contribute to the government's aim of tackling child poverty. It would also be a sensible extension of the Scottish Executive's "Hungry for Success" programme, to improve school meals. The latest statistics show that only 46.7 per cent of pupils take school lunches, so more than 50 per cent of children do not have access to the healthy options now provided by some schools.

Official statistics show that 25 per cent of our children live in poverty; yet only 19 per cent are entitled to free school meals. This translates into thousands of children living in poverty who currently have no right to free school meals.

Extending entitlement to free school meals would also offer extra support to parents who move into work and discover their in-work costs, including the cost of school lunches, mean they are not much better off. It would play an important part in reducing stigma, increasing uptake and enabling a whole-school approach to healthy eating.

Around one in three pupils entitled to free school meals are not taking them. Means testing creates stigma, discouraging uptake.

The provision of universal, nutritious free school meals would begin to tackle the emerging crisis around children's health. According to health and nutritional experts, free school meals could transform the diet of young people.

What could be a more direct way of tackling the impact of child poverty and ill health than ensuring all children, whatever their home circumstances, get at least one good meal a day? Only the Executive, and MSPs from across the political spectrum, can make this happen.

Success would help to rebuild faith in the Scottish Parliament, showing that it can make a real difference to the quality of people's lives. Free healthy meals would also contribute to the health of future generations.

The health service pays millions for universal treatment of disease; why are we so reticent to invest in universal prevention? We call on everyone, especially children, parents, teachers, and others working with children, to speak up for universal, nutritious, free school meals and respond to the School Meals Bill consultation.

MARION DAVIS, JOHN DICKIE, (PROF) ANNIE S ANDERSON, (PROF) ADRIAN SINFIELD, (DR) CARLO MORELLI, (DR) DAVID PLAYER, PETER KELLY, JOHN MULVEY, KRISTOFER McGHEE, c/o Renfrew Street, Glasgow

How exciting that the Scottish chef Nick Nairn is to champion children and healthy eating, (Magazine, 18 June). It is an offer the Executive must not discard. I agree with Nick Nairn: food needs to move higher up the Holyrood agenda. We need some joined-up thinking and action.

Future policy must ensure that our children develop discerning and healthy palates; and they should be equipped with the skills to cook the real, raw food which they consume.

FIONA BIRD, Littleton of Airlie, Kirriemuir, Angus