Some children love it, some children dread it, some children depend on it and some children simply do not get it. The midday meal that punctuates the school day across Europe differs wildly in cost and content from country to country. In some, it is paid for wholly or partly by the state; in others, parents foot the bill.
Although in recent years there has been a shift towards more nutritious school lunches – note the increased presence of fresh fruit and vegetables on the meal trays below – there is a growing awareness of the role a decent meal a day can play in tackling both health problems and social inequalities.
The figures speak for themselves: today, nearly a third of Europe’s primary-age children are either overweight or obese, and almost a quarter of the EU’s children are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
Experts say failure to invest now to prevent chronic health issues such as obesity and diabetes means saving up costly problems for the future – and failure to help families struggling to feed their children at a time of rising food prices and shrinking budgets means entrenching existing social divisions.
The answers to these problems, they say, come from smart public policy, proper investment and education to help children learn about what they eat and why it matters. But they also lie in ensuring that children have that all-important daily meal, be it pasta bake, African stew, griddled chicken, or just a nice slice of pizza.
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Sweden
What’s for lunch? African chicken stew or bean stew and rice with salad (carrot puree, pickled red onion and tofu), soup, bread, water or milk.
School lunch is so in demand at Fryshuset Hammarby Sjöstad that a queue already starts forming outside the canteen at 10am. When the doors open half an hour later – serving hours are 10.30am to 1pm – pupils holding trays rapidly form fast-flowing lines by the serving areas where they help themselves.
Every day the school serves 1,400 people – including pupils aged 13 to 19, teachers and staff. All pupils eat for free – as is the norm across Sweden – and they can help themselves to as much food as they want.
According to the 2023 Generation Pep report, an annual study of Swedish children’s diet and activity, only 3% of the country’s children and young people live healthily. Just two out of 10 do the recommended amount of physical activity and less than one in 10 follow the Swedish food agency’s dietary advice for fruit, vegetables and fish. On average, they eat half the recommended fruit and vegetables a day.
A study of Swedish four-year-olds found that overweight and obesity rose by 16.6% between 2018 and 2020, when 13% of children were overweight or obese.
“We focus on greens a lot,” says the school’s head chef, Martin. “A lot of the children don’t even eat vegetables at home. Here it’s important that they eat vegetables and discover new foods.”
• Miranda Bryant in Stockholm
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Spain
What’s for lunch? Vegetable soup and bread, followed by chicken with potatoes and vegetables, then fruit.
By 10am on a Monday, lunch at San Ignacio de Loyola, a 1,450-pupil all-through school in the town of Torrelodones, half an hour north-west of Madrid, is nicely on schedule. An enormous vat of vegetable soup bubbles away gently, dozens of pieces of chicken sizzle on the griddle and special trays are being stacked and carefully set aside for those with food allergies and intolerances.
Overseeing it all is the school’s head chef, Santiago Romero, whose cooking is founded on the Mediterranean diet, and who sees his job as stimulating as well as feeding the students.
“Because we’re cooking for kids, the main thing is to make sure their nutritional needs are being met as they grow: it’s all about legumes, fresh, natural vegetables and protein like fresh meat and fish,” he says. “But it’s also about stimulating the children so they enjoy eating in the canteen. That’s a tricky task but I try to do it by getting out of the kitchen and being with the kids while they’re eating. We need to be out there with the people we’re feeding so they can tell us how they’re feeling.”
Like many other countries, Spain has a problem with childhood obesity: a 2019 study found that 40.6% of Spanish children aged six to nine were over their recommended weight, of whom 17.3% were classed as obese. Although school meals are the responsibility of the country’s 17 regional administrations, the central government has announced measures aimed at improving children’s health.
Last year, it drew up plans to ensure at least 45% of school meals are made up of fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables. In the Madrid region, school lunches – which parents pay for unless they are eligible for financial aid – cost €5.50 (£4.75) a day in state schools.
For Romero, “the Mediterranean diet is the basis of everything”. He keeps frying to a minimum, has cut out sugar in yoghurts and does not allow processed food into his kitchen.
“All the stocks for the soups are natural and not from stock cubes,” he says. “The stock for meat paella is made from ham bones, the stock for fish paella is made with monkfish heads. It’s 100% natural.”
• Sam Jones in Torrelodones
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Italy
What’s for lunch? Pizza, spinach with stracchino cheese, banana, plum cake, bread and water.
In the country that invented pizza, it is no surprise to find the dish on the menu at Principe di Piemonte, an infant and primary school nestled among greenery in the San Paolo area of Rome. But the popular treat, freshly prepared by the head chef Giorgia and her team, is not such a regular occurrence.
A carefully planned repertoire of dishes rotates between the seasons and has a strong emphasis on incorporating organic vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and poultry, along with other locally sourced products. The ingredients are supplied by BioRistoro, an outside company contracted by Rome council.
In Italy, there is universal provision of school meals, but prices are subsidised or free only for low-income families. “There is always a first course, a second course, along with bread and fresh fruit,” says Silvia Santoloci, a dietician at Rome council.
The children start the day with breakfast, including yoghurt and freshly squeezed orange juice, and are provided with a mid-afternoon snack. There is a strong emphasis on minimising waste.
“Although this can be a challenge as there might be food items the children reject,” said Santaloci. “And because they see meal time as a recreational moment it can be difficult sometimes to ensure they eat.”
Meal portions are carefully measured according to a child’s age, and to avoid obesity. (In Italy, one in five children are overweight, according to the World Health Organization.)
• Angela Giuffrida in Rome
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Estonia
What’s for lunch? A bowl of soup – chicken and vegetable, mincemeat, or vegan – with a selection of breads, and chocolate flavoured yoghurt.
Estonian school lunches go back decades to its Soviet-era past. Now, the Baltic nation offers a blend of modern and traditional, mimicking homemade food that could have been made by an Estonian grandmother.
Today – the weekly soup day – children get their pick of chicken and vegetable soup, a simple mincemeat soup, and even a popular vegan soup option. Four choices of rye bread, all neatly laid out, are essential additions.
Children get a say in improving the food, using a QR code, in keeping with this tech-savvy and collaborative country.
“If one day the soup is a little salty, the children can give us feedback and we change it,” said Sirli Kont, an art teacher at the Gustav Adolf grammar school in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city.
Catering companies stick to calorie counts and nutrients that are “determined very precisely”, said Kont. All ingredients and nutritional data are accessible online for parents to see.
All processed food is prohibited, with the exception of once a month. And even then, the option is sometimes turned down, says Tiiu Endrikson, the manager of catering company Baltic Restaurants.
A school lunch here costs €1.80, with €1 supplied by the national government and 80 cents from the local government. For pupils – and their parents – it is free of charge.
Porridge breakfasts and dinner are also offered to children’s parents who work early or late. At Gustav Adolf, you will even find the teachers tucking into school lunches. “I’d … sit with my whole class at lunch to eat,” adds Kont.
• Shafi Musaddique in Tallinn
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Germany
What’s for lunch? Penne pasta with tomato sauce or a farmer’s platter of vegetables and a creamy herbal sauce, served with salad, fruit and water.
At Kollwitz primary school on Knaackstrasse in the north-eastern Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, children queueing up for lunch at 11.40am have a choice of two dishes – but there is a clear favourite. One hundred and ninety-four children have registered in advance for a pasta dish and just eight for the farmer’s platter – a plate of onions, broccoli, runner beans and potatoes accompanied by a creamy herbal sauce.
Berlin is the only one of Germany’s 16 states to offer school meals for free, to children in years one to six (ages six to 11). The rule, which came into force in 2019 to encourage better health, means almost 100% of pupils take up the offer, says Klaus Kühn, the manager of the Drei Köche (Three Cooks) catering company, which provides the food here. That figure is in stark contrast to elsewhere in Germany where school meals are not free and, according to the national quality centre for nutrition in nurseries and schools, only about 56% take them.
The advantage of the free meal is obvious, says Kühn. The disadvantage is that parents are no longer incentivised to cancel the meal if their children are off sick so it leads to a considerable increase in waste – from 10-15% before free meals came in, to about 30% now. (Drei Köche converts the waste to biogas.)
The school’s deputy head, Michael Temme, who supervises the high-spirited queue, is frustrated at the amount of waste, “particularly on Fridays when fish is on the menu. The kids just don’t like it. But the caterer is obliged to offer it by the decision-makers who determine what the pupils should eat based on what’s healthiest for them. The problem is it doesn’t translate well. Fish fingers might, but they’re not allowed because they’re considered to be too fatty.”
• Kate Connolly in Berlin
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Scotland
What’s for lunch? Chicken and pasta bake, served with soup, a carton of cold milk, salad or vegetables, fruit and yoghurt.
At Tinto primary school on the southside of Glasgow, the bright canteen area is decorated with cartoon veg, including Lightning McPea and Captain Cosmic Carrot, and serves a full halal menu as well as a daily vegetarian option. Children here have also taken part in vegetable-sorting sessions with a local supplier, a Glasgow city council initiative to learn more about the journey of food from seed to plate.
School lunches for five- to nine-year-olds (primaries one to five) are free, and the Scottish government recently announced this would be extended to the last two years of primary school by 2026. For pupils in primary six to seven, lunch costs £1.90. Data from the 2021 Scottish health survey indicates that 18% of children are at risk of obesity.
Betty, a catering manager of 38 years’ service, says: “Dinner ladies have the best relationships with the children when it comes to eating. We encourage them to try new flavours, and there’s the social aspect too: it’s good for them to sit down to eat together and they might try something new if their friend has chosen it.”
Stephen Sawers, the head of catering and facilities management for Glasgow council, says: “We are extremely proud to serve up more than 34,000 nutritious school meals each day across the city – all of which improve health, support the environment, benefit the local economy, and fuel our pupils for the rest of the school day.”
• Libby Brooks in Glasgow
• This article was amended on 13 October 2023. Text was added to the Estonia section to clarify that the Guardian visited on the school’s weekly soup day – a variety of hot dishes, sides and salads are provided on other days. Also, in an earlier version Tiiu Endrikson’s first name was misspelled as “Tilu”.
