UNESCO highlights 4 countries that have no food standards in schools

Meals and food hygiene in schools have always been a matter of concern as poor food standards can directly affect health and wellbeing. Recently, a study by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) found that only 60% of countries have laws or safety standards in place to regulate food and beverages in schools. This report raised concerns over the global commitment to students' health. Here’s more about the report.

All about the report
This report was recently released in collaboration with the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, and is backed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under the School Meals Coalition.
As per the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report “Only 93 out of 187 countries have legislation, compulsory standards or guidance on school food and beverages. However, only 29 per cent of these 93 countries had measures restricting food and beverage marketing in schools and only 60 per cent have standards governing food and beverages.” It was further mentioned that “The GEM team found that the survey-based assessment of schools based food and nutrition education in 30 low- and middle-income countries found that integration within the school system was mostly through extracurricular or project-based activities rather than as a standalone subject or across the curriculum.”


Focus on food
It was also mentioned that “In only three of 28 countries the assessments were regularly conducted and used. The assessment information included changes in attitudes and perceptions about food and nutrition, knowledge, food practice, nutritional status, habits and diets,” as per the study. “Most school meal programmes have education goals, alongside nutrition, health and social protection objectives. However, fewer programmes focus on preventing or mitigating obesity."

However, a similar study focused on school meal provision found that 72 per cent of countries reported some limitations on food marketing on school grounds and 52 per cent had national-level prohibitions on foods permitted on or near school grounds. “A review of nutrition policy engagement with food system transformation in high-income countries highlighted that, while most policy actions focused on communication for healthy choice behaviour change, most outcomes in the food environment domain focused on food labelling, product reformulation, providing healthy food in schools and restricting food advertising,” the GEM Report read.


The solution
“There was a lack of emphasis on reducing consumption of unhealthy food or drinks. There was an emphasis on individual responsibility instead of the food environment and on regulatory and legislative reforms,” according to the report. There is a need to build capacity at all levels through education and training across a range of sectors, including health, nutrition, agriculture and food systems. Despite clear interdependencies, the linkages between education and nutrition remain under-researched, including in data collection and monitoring of programmes and outcomes,” according to the report.