The health, environmental, and cost implications of providing healthy and sustainable school meals for every child by 2030: a global modelling study

Summary

BACKGROUND: School meal programmes are thought to improve dietary behaviour in children, with benefits sustained throughout the life course, making them important catalysts for wider food-system change. However, only one in five children globally currently receives school meals. We estimated the potential effects of extending school meal coverage to all children by 2030 for dietary health; the environmental effects related to diets; and the costs of diets at global, regional, and national levels. METHODS: We conducted health, environmental, and cost assessments of future scenarios of school meal coverage, meal frequency, meal composition, and food wastage. In the health assessment, we used statistical methods and a comparative risk assessment to estimate short-term changes in undernourishm