The Future of School Meal Programmes

School meal programs create one of the world’s most extensive social safety nets, with 83% of countries providing school meals to an estimated 418 million children daily. But this ubiquity conceals inequity; on average, 41% of the world’s primary schoolchildren are fed, with coverage at about 61% in high-income countries but only 18% in low-income countries where food is needed most. 2 When schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of children worldwide lost access to school meals, and food insecurity rates increased by about 17% worldwide, particularly affecting children in lower-income countries. These school closures also highlighted the value of school meal programs as an investment in students’ physical, mental, and cognitive health, refocusing attention on the barriers to receiving school meals, especially the stigma when free meals are only available to children from lower-income households. In this video, I summarize a selected article from the Lanet Journal explaining universal free school meals as the best solution for growing children’s food security and academic outcomes. By Payman Salamati, preventive and social medicine specialist, professor at Tehran University of Medical Sciences – Title of the paper: Universal free school meals: the future of school meal programs? -URL of This Article: thelancet.com