School Food Standards and Child Health Outcomes: What Fifteen Years of Policy Evaluation Supports
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22303810Keywords:
School food standards, Free school meals, Natural experiment, Dietary quality, Policy evaluationAbstract
Standards change what is served, and the evidence that this reaches child health outcomes is thinner than the policy case usually
implies. Natural experimental evaluation of food and nutrient-based standards found that children eating school lunches
afterwards took a lower percentage of total dietary energy from fat, at −1.8 percentage points (95% CI −2.8 to −0.9), and from
saturated fat at −1.0 (−1.6 to −0.5), than children eating packed lunches. Universal infant provision raised uptake from 38 to 80
per cent and lowered crisps, total fat and sodium, but showed no impact on fruit and vegetables or sweetened beverages, with
larger effects in low-income children. A review of six studies reported decreased obesity prevalence while no included study
reported dietary intake or quality. In one sample of primary schools, 43 per cent had a compliant food policy.
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