The average food situation in Austrian schools and kindergartens calls for improvement. FUTURE FOOD, VOLKSHILFE AUSTRIA, SIPCAN and NETWORK CHILDREN’S RIGHTS have therefore come together to form an initiative for good catering in Austria’s schools and kindergartens and are calling on politicians to take action.
Bad grades for school lunches
At the end of the summer holidays, school starts again for over 1 million children and young people. In a new study, Manuel Schatzer from the SIPCAN research institute examined the current food situation in Austria’s secondary level I and II schools. “The result is sobering: at 32% of all schools, students currently do not have a warm lunch available. Nationwide, over 150,000 children and young people at middle schools, high schools and vocational schools have no opportunity to eat a warm meal at school. That means one in four students is affected,” says Schatzer.
Dangers to children’s health
And the quality of the food is also not the best: around two thirds of the schools with lunch menus are not checked to ensure that their menus are healthy. “With the start of the new school year, on average throughout Austria there will be an overweight child in every second school desk and two obese children in every school class. One factor in this is how regularly the children eat meals. Since children and young people cover around a third of their daily energy needs at school, there is a great need for action,” continued Schatzer.
Children at risk of poverty are particularly affected
In this context, Erich Fenninger from Volkshilfe emphasizes the particular importance of free school meals for children affected by poverty: “Every 10th family in Austria is affected by food poverty and every 5th child is affected by poverty. The trend is rising because inflation hits families affected by poverty more severely because they have to spend a larger percentage of their household income on food than others. Descriptions from Volkshilfe’s social counseling service show the drama when parents lack the money for a healthy, balanced diet for their children. The health consequences are clear: children affected by poverty are sick more often, and this becomes apparent even in early childhood. The ability to concentrate and therefore school success also suffer from inadequate nutrition. A healthy school lunch could compensate for this, as a Swedish long-term study shows. It shows that free and healthy school meals offer significant advantages not only in the short term but also in the long term for people’s health, school performance and even their future income,” says Fenninger, who also calls for free lunch in schools as part of basic child welfare .
Politicians also have homework to do
“The aim of the National Action Plan published in December 2023 is, among other things, the comprehensive provision of free, sustainable and health-promoting meals per school day for students by 2030. That is a challenge, but it can be done. I would like to emphasize that the next federal government is bound to this action plan. It must report continuously to the EU until 2030 – but more than that: it must be responsible for school and kindergarten meals for children and parents. “This is homework that she has to deal with in any case,” says Elisabeth Schaffelhofer-Garcia Marquez from the NETWORK CHILDREN’S RIGHTS.
The parties’ election promises regarding school meals
The FUTURE ESSEN association wanted to know how seriously the parties take the issue of school meals and published a survey about it before the election. “The situation with school and kindergarten meals in Austria is not satisfactory. Politicians have made important decisions, but implementation is lacking,” criticizes Natalie Lehner from ZUKUNFT ESSEN. “The results of our party survey show that only three out of five parties, namely the SPÖ, GRÜNE and NEOS, see kindergarten and school meals as important for the coming legislative period and want to take concrete political steps for their implementation. The FPÖ even gives food a very low priority. Unfortunately, we did not receive a response from the ÖVP to our inquiries about the party survey.”
Appeal to the next government
The initiative from various organizations in the field of children and nutrition therefore calls on the parties to take concrete political steps in the coming legislative period to enable every child in Austria’s schools and kindergartens to have a free meal per day by 2030, which promotes health, equal opportunities and sustainability promotes.