A new report highlighting nutrition concerns joins the range of issues faced by David Seymour since he launched his revised school lunches programme eight weeks ago.
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The list of concerns about David Seymour’s beleaguered school lunch problem grew longer this week with the release of research showing the lunches provide students with just half the energy they require from a midday meal.
A group of researchers from the University of Auckland based their findings on the nutritional data featured on the website of the School Lunch Collective, the group of companies contracted by the government to provide lunches to more than 466 New Zealand schools.
The nutrition concerns join the range of issues – including flies allegedly found in food, melted plastic in meals and food frozen on arrival – faced by Associate Health Minister David Seymour since he launched his revised Ka Ora, Ka Ako, Healthy School Lunches Programme eight weeks ago.
According to international guidelines, lunch should provide 30% of a student’s daily energy requirements. “What we found was that these meals had about 15 percent of the energy that a child needs for a day,” said Dr Sally Mackay, a senior lecturer in epidemiology and biostatistics at Auckland University, and a researcher on the project. “So that’s well below that 30%.”
While a lack of energy was the main concern, Mackay said this wasn’t simply a problem of students feeling hungry after lunch. It was about “those missing foods, the vitamins, minerals and proteins that would be contained in them.”
It wasn’t a mattter of “just filling the students up,” she said. “Because, to have good academic performance, they need to have nutritious meals.”
Mackay pointed out there were meals on the SLC site, such as the chicken pesto pasta and 3-cheese macaroni, that contained no vegetables at all, when the required daily serving, set for the programme by the Ministry of Health, is half a cup.
TVNZ asked the SLC about the low vegetable content of some meals; a spokesperson replied that such meals “when complimented with the additional fruit and snack items provided, meet the national standards”.
Regarding the energy content of the meals, the SLC spokesperson said: “There is no requirement for energy under our current agreement.”
They said all meals were designed by food experts who assessed the content to ensure it met required nutritional standards. Then they were presented to the Ministry of Education for further feedback, “and tested with students to make sure they are enjoyable”.
TVNZ asked the Ministry of Education about the low vegetable content of some meals. A spokesperson responded via email that the nutritional standards were developed in consultation with the Ministry of Health, lunch providers, schools, kura and nutrition stakeholders and informed by the Ministry of Health’s Healthy Food and Drink Guidance. “The nutritional standards have not changed from previous iterations of the programme,” they said. “How meals meet the nutritional standards can be seen here.”
How cheap is too cheap?
New Zealand’s school lunches are produced at a cost of $3 per student, rising to $3.85 for students in years 9 and above.
That budget, which decreased this year to less than half of the $8.60 previously allocated, leaves Mackay with little hope for the meals ever meeting the international nutritional standards. “The budget – it’s just too low,” she says.
It’s a sentiment shared by Claire Kelly from West Auckland-based former school lunch provider Lunch with Crunch which, until this year, produced 3200 school lunches every day. That has dropped to 900 meals per day, as local schools in the program now get their meals made and delivered by the Hamilton-based SLC.
Kelly learned about the steep drop in her business the same day her $80,000 commercial kitchen refurbishment was completed. Immediately, she was forced to reduce staff from 36 workers to nine. She questions the government’s quest for cost efficiency, pointing out that her brand-new kitchen extension has never been used while 16 of the workers she was forced to make redundant are still “sitting at home on welfare”.
Kelly seriously questions the reality of a decent $3 lunch. She’s not asking for the $8.60 of the good old glory days of 2024, but estimates she would need $4.50 for small meals, $5.50 for medium-sized and $6-$6.50 for large. “We’d love to work with the government to come up with something good,” she says.
Kelly’s pricing is in line with the amounts spent on school lunches in other Western countries: NZ$6 in the UK and NZ$5.40 in Canada. In Finland, a country with a similar population and land area to ours, the budget is NZ$6.10 per meal and all 780,000 of the country’s students are fed each day, with schools selecting fresh, healthy-looking fare from local providers.
Asked for comment about the feasibility of providing nutritious meals for $3, the Ministry of Education responded: “The model as designed and recommended to Cabinet by the Expert Advisory Group is able to deliver tasty meals that meet the same nutritional standards as the previous iteration of the programme. This is due to the collective efforts of the School Lunch Collective, where produce suppliers provide preferential pricing, the Collective can leverage its purchasing power and create efficiencies through standardisation of production, supply chains and logistics.”
A long way for lunch to travel
Seymour’s use of one main provider based in Hamilton doesn’t just affect small businesses such as Claire Kelly’s, it also worries Sally Mackay on a nutritional level.
Even if there were vegetables in every meal, the vitamins B and C would degrade in the travelling process, she says.
Those long travel times could also explain why schools have reported meals turning up at temperatures ranging from lukewarm to cold to frozen. Also why, when veggies do feature, they’re frequently cubed carrots or peas, contradicting Seymour’s suggestion that his revised programme could make savings by featuring local produce.
As Opotoki Primary teacher Clare Whyte says, with meals coming from far away, “there’s no option for fresh vegetables in this system. You can’t have lettuce.”
Last year, Opotiki’s meals came via a provider “around the corner” and were devoured by the kids. “I loved them,” one student tells TVNZ. This year the lunches travel 240km to reach the school and frequently, even among hungry kids, end up in the bin.
The meals also bear labels listing long strings of additives, and use-by dates as late as 2027. The jury is out regarding the wholesomeness of such additives, but they make Sally Mackay uncomfortable. “I do feel we shouldn’t be feeding our children lots and lots of additives and preservatives every day,” she says.
On that matter, the SLC responded. “We comply with all regulations on food additives in New Zealand, as set by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).”
‘Marmite sandwiches might be dinner’
When it comes to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s now famous suggestion that concerned parents could simply provide their children with a marmite sandwich and an apple, Whyte says a marmite sandwich is something many of these students might be lucky to get for dinner. The lunches are an essential source of nutrition for them, she stresses, in a world where their dietary decisions aren’t their own. “Our kids don’t make choices about the availability of food at home but they pay for it, with their energy levels,” she says.
David Seymour has energetically defended the quality of the meals in his new programme. “There’s a lot of people who say they enjoy these meals,” he told Jack Tame on Q&A earlier this month. “Many people say they’re better than what they had last year.”
And that’s true, some schools have identified themselves as satisfied customers. But a TVNZ survey found that wasn’t the norm. “We sent a survey to over 400 schools who receive school lunches,” says TVNZ in-depth reporter Gill Higgins. “They were simple yes/no questions and we got responses from about 100 schools – 71% of those said the quality was not acceptable. And more than 80% said that, under the new programme, there was too much waste.”
Regarding waste the SLC responded: “Meals are served in aluminium trays, which are recyclable and one of the safest ways to transport food. The surplus meals and packaging are collected by The School Lunch Collective delivery drivers and reported on our website daily. We rely on schools to provide accurate ordering information so we can adjust our delivery sizes to ensure there is as little food waste as possible.”
David Seymour, in an email, said the number of surplus meals was dropping, but it wasn’t mandatory for schools to return the meals or to count them.
But most of the waste appears to be a direct result of students throwing out uneaten food. As one principal said: “Taxpayer dollars are literally going in the bin.” Another said her school was producing five times as much waste as last year. “We’d got down to half a bucket of waste a week. Now we’re half a bucket a day.”
Randwick Primary principal Andrew Wooster also sees a lot of meals in the bin, even though the children are hungry. “Because frankly they haven’t been fit enough for our school pets let alone the kids to eat them,” he says, describing “cold, bland mush”.
Aside from waste, there’s another problem with food in the bin. What meal could be less nutritious for a child than one that remains uneaten?
Opotiki Primary Principal Tony Howe sees the effects of that straight away. “It makes a huge difference to their learning and their behaviour, concentration, happiness! Hungry kids aren’t happy kids . And if they’re not eating, because it’s not good food, they’re not happy…
“But if you give them healthy food, they’ll eat it. Kids like good quality food as well.”
The nutritional research was done by Aotearoa Health Collective and published in The Briefing.
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