Fizzy drinks and fruit juices fuel rise in processed packed lunches

SCHOOLCHILDREN are getting most of their lunchtime calories from ultra-processed food, a study has found.

Around three quarters of calories across all types of school lunches came from ultra-processed foods such as bread, snacks, pudding and sugary drinks, researchers at Imperial College London said.

Packed lunches contained a higher proportion of calories from highly processed foods (82 per cent) than school meals (64 per cent) across all ages.

One of the largest contributors to ultra-processed calories as a proportion of food came from fluids, such as fizzy drinks, fruit juice or yoghurt drinks.

Researchers looked at the diets of more than 3,300 children in primary and secondary school, collected through the National Diet and Nutrition survey, to examine the proportion of ultra-processed foods in products brought from home and in school meals, including free school meals or food bought at a school canteen.

The scientists said that one of the easiest and cheapest ways to improve the nutritional value of school lunches would be to swap high-calorie soft drinks with water.

The researchers said urgent policy changes were needed to cap the amount of processed foods within school lunches and to increase access to free school meals, which could help to boost the health of Britain’s children. The number of obese children dropped by more than a quarter last year following the removal of Covid restrictions and the return to schools, NHS data show.

Official figures show that for this academic year since September 2021, 10.4 per cent of reception pupils were obese – which was down more than a quarter from the 14.4 per cent figure of 2020-2021.

Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said that the increase in obesity levels last year, following the first year of lockdown, had raised fears of an increase in long-term obesity rates.

He said: “It appears, however, with kids returning to school and kicking balls around with their mates, the rise has stalled. This preliminary report is charting the stall and decline and is to be welcomed.”