Like parenting, school shapes children throughout their formative years. Education institutions bear the responsibility of instilling knowledge, values, and habits that can support their journey into adulthood. One crucial aspect is healthy diets and good nutrition, which are vital for children’s health and wellbeing in the long run. In this light, standards and interventions are required to create healthy school food environments.

Health, Nutrition, and Education Nexus

Health, nutrition, and education are interlinked. As children require sufficient and timely nutrition to grow, education can bridge this need by providing information and instilling healthy diet, good nutrition, and physical exercise habits that may last them well into adulthood.

Hence, interventions that can address education and nutrition concerns are crucial. For example, programs like school meals can incentivize parents to enroll their children in school and improve attendance. At the same time, providing healthy, nutritious food in schools helps address child malnutrition, which remains a global concern today.

Insufficient or excessive nutrient intake can result in stunting, wasting, obesity, and other forms of malnutrition, whose effects will persist into adulthood.

Creating Healthy School Food Environments

The World Health Organization (WHO) reinforces this notion in its guideline published in January 2026. Schools are encouraged to improve the availability of food and beverages that support a healthy diet, enabling healthy school food environments.

This food provision can be in the form of meals or snacks. Globally, countries have been integrating school meal programs into their policies, with 459 million children receiving school meals in 2024. In its implementation, however, the quality of school meals tends to be overlooked.

Healthy school food environments must begin at the system level. Therefore, schools must establish nutrition standards or rules that specify which foods and beverages may be provided, served, or sold in schools. The WHO emphasizes that the development of these standards or rules must be based on evidence-informed dietary guidance from an authoritative scientific body. There also needs to be consideration of local contexts, including nutritional situation, sociocultural considerations, and food availability.

Along with nutritional standards, schools can design ways to nudge students to pick, buy, and consume healthier food and beverages. Examples include changing the placement, presentation, or price of food options available to students.

Local Contextualization Needed

Enabling healthy school food environments is one aspect of broader efforts to address key issues in education, nutrition, and health. As we are living in a time of polycrisis, governments, schools, and healthcare systems must pay careful consideration to food security and climate change vulnerability. Integration of these aspects in relevant policies, school teaching, and health services is key.

Additionally, achieving meaningful progress requires a combination with other elements that support a nutrition-friendly school. This includes raising awareness and building the capacity of stakeholders in school, promoting nutrition and health in school curriculum, and introducing supportive school nutrition and health services.

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma

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