Parent ambassadors present their manifesto for healthy children's food in Parliament with Sharon Hodgson MP and Baroness Rosie Boycott. Credit: Matt Crossick | Sustain
Children's Food Ambassadors have taken their parents' manifesto for healthy children's food to Westminster and shared their first hand experience of the barriers to ensuring children can eat healthily with MPs and peers. Children's Food Campaign Manager Barbara Crowther reflects on the exchange.
Parent ambassadors present their manifesto for healthy children's food in Parliament with Sharon Hodgson MP and Baroness Rosie Boycott. Credit: Matt Crossick | Sustain
Seven in ten parents say it's getting harder, not easier, to feed their children healthily. From struggling to afford healthy food to the postcode lottery of school meal access or the constant bombardment of promotion for confectionery, fizzy drinks and fast food brands, the pressures and constant juggling act for parents is extreme.
Parents feel the weight of that responsibility for what their child eats every single day. Calling for healthy, free school meals or for better regulation of junk food advertising is not abdicating responsibility or 'nanny state', it's about putting the supportive framework around parents and their children that makes their job easier, not harder.
Children's Food Ambassadors took that message loud and clear to parliament this month, when amidst the wood panelling and stained glass windows of the Jubilee Room, they shared the key pillars of Our Children, Our Future: a parents' manifesto for healthy children's food.
Following a cheery welcome from our host Sharon Hodgson MP, who chairs the all party parliamentary group on school food, it was over to Jaynaide Powis, mum to a two year old son, to introduce the manifesto to the parliamentarians gathered. She spoke about how infant weaning opened her eyes to the massive explosion in commercial toddler products, all covered in health claims, and how hard it is for average parents to work out what is really healthy, and what is not. She also referred to the uneven provision of healthy food in nurseries and childcare. Whilst some settings are doing an amazing job of healthy nutrition and helping children learn about food, this is not the norm elsewhere, and Jaynaide echoed parents' call for more attention to be given to early years education settings.
The event's co-host Baroness Rosie Boycott further expanded on these themes, reflecting on her time as part of the Lords' select committee's year long inquiry into food, diet and obesity, and how they'd explored the correlation between high consumption of ultra-processed foods high in fat, salt and sugar and the lifetime health trajectory for children from a very young age. She reflected that fear of 'nanny statism' had too often got in the way of effective policy making, allowing an unhealthy level of commercial dominance of UK diets to explode. The parents' manifesto calls have echoed so many of the recommendations of the Lords' report, which was subsequently published on 24 October.
School food was also a major topic of discussion between parents and parliamentarians. Ambassadors Mary Needham and Zoe Wright talked about how important it is to get food in school right, when children are at school 190 days a year, including problems when standards are not properly monitored. Parents are looking to schools to be able to feed all children who need a healthy meal, and ensure a consistent healthy eating policy throughout the school day - for the food on the plate plus creative approaches food education from farm to fork.
Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Education, Families and Children, Munira Wilson MP has long championed expansion of access to free school meals, and their policy to extend eligibility to all pupils living in poverty across primary and secondary, followed by universal primary meals. She reflected it is not enough just to provide meals, they must be healthy meals, and the need for joined up policy on nutrition and education. She also called for expansion of the soft drinks industry levy to all high sugar juice and milk-based drinks.
Sharon Hodgson MP has been a champion of school food for all for many years, and reflected on how things had changed since the school food plan, universal infant meals and introduction of school food standards. Yet other countries have gone much further to expand universal school meals, and we aspire to a similar vision for the UK, knowing that it will bring a significant return on investment. She noted the fiscal challenges facing the new government but says she remains hopeful there will be more progress, not least with the commitment that the primary school breakfast clubs programme will not be means tested. However, as she pointed out, children who have breakfast are hungry again by lunchtime, and we cannot stop at breakfast. She spoke about ensuring funding catches up with what healthy and sustainable school meals really cost to deliver, or we risk a collapse of the school catering system altogether.
Louise Burke, editorial director for Netmums shared how important these issues are for parents on their own forums, where eligibility for meals plus quality and portion sizes of school meals are regularly and hotly debated topics. She spoke about how parents need reliable, honest information, and encouraged the health and food organisations to partner with them in providing engaging, informative content for parents.
Moving to discuss the cost of living, Ambassador Agnieska Stanczak spoke from the perspective of both a parent and a school cook. The current cost of living emergency and food price inflation have meant that so many parents like her now constantly find that healthier options are more expensive than less healthy foods. The school where she works already runs a breakfast club, and she movingly described the look in many children's eyes as they arrive each morning as well as during lunchtimes, and her pain at seeing their parents queuing at the local food bank. She called on policy makers to provide more support with affording healthy fruit and vegetables, including ensuring Healthy Start payments are available to all pregnant women, babies and young children who need them, and that the value reflects rises in food prices.
Research academic Rounaq Nayak is parent to two children, and he told the politicians how even his 9 year old son talks about energy drinks, believing the hype they will make him run faster because he's seen a footballer promoting them, and the importance of getting all shops to stop selling them to children, rather than the current voluntary pledges by some stores. Even with the government's promised ban on sales to under-16s, he argued compellingly that the drinks need to carry much clearer warning signs for everyone about the levels of sugar and caffeine they contain.
Continuing with the influences of advertisers and marketeers on their children, ambassador Lauren Morely reflected on the all the junk food marketing and advertising influences children are bombarded with, so that even her 6 year old son recognises and asks for things he sees around him and catch his eye when out shopping - and how the spotlight could be on healthier food and drink instead
We're so grateful to the parliamentarians who came by, listened and stood up for parents calling for better food regulation, expanded healthy school meals, a ban on sales of energy drinks, more honest food labelling, and support schemes for disadvantaged families. We had representatives of Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Green Party in the room, giving hope of a real crossbench consensus in standing up with parents to support of Our Children and Our Future.
Thanks also to all the organisations who supported us with the event, including Netmums, Magic Breakfast, School Food Matters, the Food Foundation, First Steps Nutrition Trust, the Obesity Health Alliance, Child Poverty Action Group, Bite Back along with our funders Impact on Urban Health and the Nutritional Wellbeing Foundation.
Children's Food Campaign: Better food and food teaching for children in schools, and protection of children from junk food marketing are the aims of Sustain's high-profile Children's Food Campaign. We also want clear food labelling that can be understood by everyone, including children.
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