Soil Association: Food spending must be increased

The Soil Association has said the government's targets for spending on school dinner ingredients are too low to meet “reasonable nutritional standards”.

The Department for Education and Skills has set a minimum of 50 pence per head for the cost of primary school meal ingredients.

But the association’s policy director, Peter Melchett, said this fell far short of the association's call for 70 pence per head and would not be sufficient to meet the recommendations of the school meal review panel.

In its second annual survey of school meals, the association discovered that where food quality has improved, school dinner uptake has increased, bucking the trend to go home or eat packed lunch, he said.

Mr Melchett said the survey showed 30 per cent of local education authorities (LEAs) are now sourcing some organic produce and 63 per cent are sourcing some local food, stressing that the investment of these local authorities needs to be repeated across the country.