Could school lunches help with sustainability?

Yes.

Okay, there’s more to say but that’s the short answer. Providing school lunches to every kid on the planet could result in substantial improvements in global health and environmental benefits.

Springman and colleagues (2025) modelled what would happen if every school age child in the world was provided with a healthy meal that followed guidelines for sustainable diets. Their findings are worth looking at.

• Food-insecure populations reduced by one quarter
• More than 1 million cases of non-communicable diseases per year prevented if eating habits were partly maintained into adulthood
• Food related environmental costs were halved if they followed sustainable diet guidelines and reduced food waste

This sounds pretty good, but surely then the costs are high?

Nope, the costs were 0.1% of GDP for high income countries and 1.0% of GDP for low income countries. This was more than compensated by the cost savings from reduced costs of climate change impacts and reduced costs of illness.

So, can we say school lunch everyone?

For another fascinating look at school lunch programs, I recommend the Gastropod podcast episode: Lunch Gets Schooled.