UNESCO urges healthier school meals with focus on fresh, local ingredients to combat childhood obesity

Nearly half of the world’s primary school children now receive school meals, but UNESCO warns that food quality remains a critical gap. UNESCO is urging governments to prioritize fresh, minimally processed ingredients and integrate food education into curricula as childhood obesity rises and food insecurity worsens.

Nutrition Insight speaks to the humanitarian organization’s director of Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, Manos Antoninis, about obstacles, real action, ultra-processed foods, and lessons to learn from success stories across the globe.

What obstacles could prevent UNESCO’s school meal vision from becoming a reality?
Antoninis: Expanding homegrown school feeding, i.e., ensuring food is purchased from local smallholder farmers and traders, requires training, networking, and other capacity-building efforts to expand relevant food production and ensure predictable and adequate access to markets. 

Tackling agrobiodiversity and promoting local plants and vegetables in a way that locally produced school meals can be provided across the board requires capacity building among food producers. Agroecology knowledge networks are key to promoting indigenous crops and practices. For example, in Brazil, a network of agronomists, forest engineers, farmer unions, and farmers has focused on preserving traditional agrobiodiversity practices and engaging with farmers who provide food for school feeding and government programs.

How will UNESCO ensure its new tools lead to policy change?
Antoninis: UNESCO’s GEM team that produced the new research is working in partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the research consortium of the School Meals Coalition. This partnership is bringing together the education and the nutrition communities to ensure that education is not simply seen as a conduit for food but also as a partner in striving for more healthy communities. In September 2025, there will be a School Meals Coalition Global Ministerial Summit in Brazil, at which the GEM Report will be working with its partners to reinforce the need for the quality of school meals to be monitored more closely by countries.

Manos Antoninis, director of GEM Report.Also this year, UNESCO will develop a series of tools, including a practical manual and a training program, for governments and education professionals to better integrate health and nutrition issues.

Additionally, to amplify UNESCO’s voice on these issues, its director-general, Audrey Azoulay has appointed two chefs, each with three Michelin stars, to act as Goodwill Ambassadors: Mauro Colagreco in 2022, to focus on biodiversity, and Daniel Humm in 2024, to focus on food education.

How will UNESCO measure the long-term impact of food education on children’s eating habits?
Antoninis: The GEM Report at UNESCO will be monitoring policies that countries have in place in relation to school meals on its Profiles Enhancing Education Reviews website and the financing mechanisms they have in place to support them to accompany its 2026 Global Report due for release next year.

What lessons from Brazil, China, and India can make future school meal reforms scalable and culturally relevant?
Antoninis: In Brazil, 100% of children receive school meals in all three levels of education. The quality of school meals is also made a priority. Some 7,300 registered nutritionists make decisions on school menu design, emphasizing fresh or minimally processed foods to promote healthy nutrition. The school feeding program has a mandatory farm-to-school component to increase healthy food in schools and support local farmers. The dietary guidelines state that a minimum of 75% of school meal funds must be spent on unprocessed or minimally processed foods. 

A network of agronomists, forest engineers, farmer unions, and farmers has focused on preserving traditional agrobiodiversity practices and engaging with farmers who provide food for school feeding and government programs. Analysis of public schools in Florianopolis found that 95% of schools had developed some nutrition education actions in 2019, including pedagogical activities in the curriculum (96%), school gardens (72%), and hands-on cooking classes (46%).

India’s nutri-school model is an integrated approach that aims to teach children about the importance of adequate hygiene, physical activity, balanced diets, and the benefits of biofortified crops. It also aims to guide them on how to prepare and choose such meals while providing high-quality kitchens and health clubs and utilizing adequately trained teachers and health and nutrition students. In India, the integration of locally produced and procured biofortified zinc wheat and iron pearl millet into school meals in six states involved training some 20,000 farmers who live near schools to adopt, grow, and market these grains and link them to school food procurement systems. 

In China, introducing vegetables, milk, and eggs in rural schools has increased children’s nutrient intake and helped to boost school attendance. China’s Nutrition Improvement Programme significantly improved children’s social competence, learning behaviors, and autonomy, especially among girls and children with lower-educated mothers. 

UNESCO will develop a series of tools, including a practical manual and a training program, for governments and education professionals to better integrate health and nutrition issues.Japan is also referenced as a positive case study. In the 1960s, Japan had the lowest life expectancy of all countries in the G7, linked to a sudden influx of imported, processed foods. In response, school lunches were designed by nutritionists to be universal. The 2005 Basic Act on Shokuiku (Food and Nutrition Education) gave a legal mandate to a long history of food-related practices in Japanese schools. Students eat with their teachers in the classroom, clean up school meals, and are strongly encouraged not to waste food.

How will UNESCO engage the food industry to reduce ultra-processed foods in schools?
Antoninis: As UNESCO’s director-general Audrey Azoulay said, ‘We need to focus on balanced school meals made with fresh produce and on teaching children good eating habits to ensure they grow up healthy. It’s a major issue for health and education.’ Through its partner, the School Meals Coalition, UNESCO will continue lobbying on different fronts to ensure the need for better quality food in school environments is heard. For instance, the UK School Food Alliance, which is the alliance of professional caterers across the UK nations, has already spotlighted the report as essential reading.

Childhood obesity under spotlight

Experts in Aotearoa, New Zealand, have recently critiqued that local government-funded school lunches are falling short on nutrition and quality standards. They urge transparency in meal content, increased energy content, and urgent review of compliance with nutrition standards across all contractual obligations.

Mexico recently banned school junk food to tackle the obesity crisis and instead promotes healthy alternatives, such as regional and seasonal plants without added sugar or salt.