Your article showed the variation across Europe in school food (Pizza, plum cake and pickled red onion: how school lunches look across Europe, 13 October). Our European Research Council-funded study examined the difference school meals made to children aged 11 to 15 in low-income families in the UK, Norway and Portugal (not covered in the article).
While Norway does not provide school lunches, Portugal provides all children with nutritious meals that are regulated according to national standards (fresh vegetable soup, meat and fish on alternate days, brown bread, and fruit or – occasionally – jelly). In Portugal, school meals play an important part in mitigating the effects of poverty on children’s diets via a three-tier payment system that results in all children from low-income families being entitled to a free school meal (FSM). This is in stark contrast to England, where around a third of children growing up in poverty are not entitled to a FSM under its stringent means-testing system.
