Fighting for healthy food in schools
As a retired school principal, Heather Morse has seen firsthand the consequences of students trying to learn while hungry.
“A lot of behavioural issues in the classroom have to do with students not having a decent meal in the morning,” Morse says.
Getting healthy food in the school for kids who needed it was Morse’s first priority when she became principal at Somerset and District Elementary School.
“We worked closely with our home and school association and we were able to get funding for a breakfast program and recruit some volunteers,” she recalls. “We were also able to provide a lunch as well as a healthy snack at recess.”
Now Morse has expanded that goal as part of the Kings County Community Food Council (KCCFC), a small nonprofit with a big mission: to ensure the county has a sustainable local food system where everyone has access to enough safe, nutritious food. A big part of that is getting local governments to endorse the call for a national school food program.
The organization was formed in 2019 when the Western Zone Community Health Boards identified food security as one of four priority health issues in this part of the province. KCCFC is part of the national group, the Coalition for Healthy School Food, comprising more than 200 organizations that are advocating for a Canada-wide healthy school food program.
“We have been reaching out to local politicians and they have been very receptive,” Morse says. “We want to build awareness of food security and we also want to focus on basic income because that is a very big part of the equation.”
Poverty and basic income have been on the political docket for a long time, without much change, and so Morse is not expecting dramatic change in the short term. But she is determined to push forward. Municipal councils and health boards across the region have endorsed the coalition’s call for a national school food program. Cities and organizations across the country have made a similar endorsement.
Canada remains the only G7 country without a national school lunch program. A patchwork of school food programming reaches only a small percentage of the country’s five million school-aged students, and in 2017 UNICEF ranked Canada 37 out of 41 industrialized countries for food security among children.
It may seem overly optimistic to expect an endorsement from a small Nova Scotia municipality will have an impact on national policy. But Morse says we should not underestimate the determination of committed people. Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Halifax and other cities have all endorsed the proposal.
“We have a lot of people pushing the same direction and getting the message out there,” she says. “When people find out that Third World countries have a national school lunch program, but Canada does not, they are asking why.”
People sometimes find it hard to understand why families should look to schools to provide meals for children, Morse points out.
“Society has changed,” she says. “My mom was a stay-athome mom, but in many cases today both parents are working or there is only one parent or guardian.”