School Lunch Survey 2006

Go to Sue's Press Release on this subject.

Go to Independent Review of School Lunch Survey from Dietician Sarah Crawford

Background

In 2005 the Green Party conducted a survey of 50 primary and secondary schools to ascertain what children were able to purchase for school lunches.

In 2006 we decided to repeat the survey to see if there had been any improvement, particularly following the hightened publicity over childhood obesity.

Of the 50 schools surveyed in 2005, we managed to obtain menus from 37 of them (13 no longer publish their menus).

We were disappointed to see that only two had made any changes to their menus to make them more healthy.

The other 35 remained unchanged.

In order to try to gauge whether there had been any improvement in the overall situation we included a further 17 randomly selected schools so that we could compare results with last year's survey.

Again we were disappointed to find there had only been a small improvement over the past year in the food being sold in schools.

This year's survey showed that 90% of schools were selling cookies, cakes, chocolate and donuts; 85% of schools surveyed were selling pies, hotdogs, sausage rolls and 63% were selling chips.

Almost 70% of schools do not sell water and there is no fruit on sale in 68% of schools.
Some of those schools with poor lunch menus are participants of the Ministry of Education supported Healthy Schools Programme. Most schools sell lunches everyday, meaning that children are able to eat unhealthy lunches everyday if they chose to, or if their parents are unable to make lunches.

School Lunch Survey Results comparison

2005:
98% of schools sell pies, hotdogs, 'hotbites' or sausage rolls.
72% sell chips — ( in five of 50 schools those were corn chips, and in one wedges).
80% of schools sell cookies / cakes / chocolate / donuts
In 68% of schools the menu does not include fruit.
In 24% of schools the roll or sandwich is more expensive than the pie.
In 22% of schools there is no roll or sandwich on the menu.
30% have yoghurt on the menu.
16% of schools sell muesli bars.
24% list water on the menu.
In 8% school lunches are only available one day a week.

2006:
85% of schools sell pies, hotdogs, 'hotbites' or sausage rolls.
63% sell chips — ( including corn chips)
90% of schools sell cookies / cakes / chocolate / donuts
In 70% of schools the menu does not include fruit.
In 30% of schools the roll or sandwich is more expensive than the pie.
In 15% of schools there is no roll or sandwich on the menu.
22% have yoghurt on the menu.
12% of schools sell muesli bars.
31% list water on the menu.
In 13% school lunches are only available one day a week.