School food culture under spotlight in School Food Matters hot lunch trial

A small pilot program in 2020 served up hot lunches to 200 students across three primary schools, with 90 per cent of parents saying they would like to see schools provide hot lunches every day.

Its success resulted in the state government providing a further $1.9 million to trial the program in 30 more schools.

The first 15 schools, including Beaconsfield and East Devonport Primary Schools, Mountain Heights School, Yolla and Rosebery District Schools and Smithton High School, will serve lunches in Term 2 this year.

School Food Matters lunch project manager Julie Dunbabin said up to 3500 kids will be fed around three lunches a week as part of the trial.

She said up to 50 per cent of the ingredients will be sourced from Tasmania, for meals made from scratch such as butter chicken, chicken drumsticks and Asian salad, fish fingers and cottage pie.

The recipes have all been designed and tested by School Food Matters, formely the School Canteen Association.

"Tasmania is the only state that is doing this, we are leading the way but other states are watching us very closely," Mrs Dunbabin said.

"I would love this to be in all schools, government, Catholic and Independent...if we can get it happening in Tassie, we can show how it can be done."

Mrs Dunbabin said the idea for hot school lunches came from her 2019 Churchill Fellowship.

"I went away to see how other countries feed their children whilst at school. The big reason why they provide lunch to every child is because it improves academic outcomes for their children and their country," she said.

"The kids have full tummies and therefore they can learn."

As part of the Fellowship, Mrs Dunbabin visited schools in France, where they offered students an hour to sit down and eat, and 40 minutes for play.

She said the Tasmanian trial will dedicate time for sit down lunches.

"The Australian way is to spend five minutes gobbling down food and then they go and play but I think we do need to allocate more time to eat lunch. Play is important but kids need to eat as well, so there are no melt downs in the afternoon," she said.

"Some children never sit at a table to eat. This is about looking at our food culture and allowing children to sit, eat and enjoy their food. That is what we found in the pilot, the kids loved to sit down with their mates to have a meal, and then go out and play."

Mrs Dunbabin said the first pilot conducted over 20 days saw an anectodal increase in school attendance and an improvement in behaviour after lunch.

As a result of these findings, the second pilot will look at school attendance data and NAPLAN results to scientifcally measure for changes.

"In that 20 days we had some children who had not been at school for the whole year all of a sudden coming every day because they were getting fed," she said.

"When the children are sitting down and eating with their friends it is amazing what they eat. We had lots of parents ask 'how did you get my child to eat?'

"We certainly didn't force them, it is really interesting to see how peer pressure worked in a positive way. There were lots of empty plates."

The costs?

All of the meals in the school trial will be supplied at no cost to parents, but an evaluation of the trial will ask parents how much they would be willing to pay for the hot lunches.

In other countires the hot lunches are provided free to families on welfare, while other families pay.

Mrs Dunbabin said simple lunchbox meals of a sandwich and a piece of fruit usually cost around $3 to $5.

"The more common lunchboxes, which are packed with highly processed biscuits and chips sit at around $7," she said.

"So we can offer something that is a lot more nutritious, and we know that children are eating the five food groups."