Schools are critical settings for shaping children’s diets and eating habits. Most children spend many hours at school each day, making school food an important part of their daily nutrition. Schools offer an opportunity to provide children with nutritious foods they may not be receiving at home, helping to fight malnutrition, enhance their well-being and provide the fuel they need to learn and earn later in life.

Schools also offer an opportunity to protect children from unhealthy foods that contribute to malnutrition, educate them about healthy eating and help them foster healthier long-term habits. Policies and interventions—including providing nutritious school meals that rely on local, sustainable procurement, restricting the sale and marketing of ultra-processed products in and around schools, developing school nutrition guidelines and providing nutrition education—help ensure children are eating better at school and are learning how and why to make healthier food choices.

Effective, comprehensive healthy school food policies:

• Make nutritious foods consistently accessible in and around schools.
• Establish nutritional standards for the preparation and service of foods and beverages offered to children in schools, supporting healthy growth and dietary habits.
• Adopt public procurement standards for school food, mandating a set percentage from sustainably and locally sourced producers, including smallholder farmers and traditional communities.
• Ban the sale, marketing, advertisement and sponsorship of foods, beverages and related brands—including ultra-processed products—that fail to meet nutrition standards or evidence-informed dietary guidelines, or that bear front-of-package warning labels, in and around schools.
• Include mandatory, comprehensive nutrition education as part of the school curriculum from preschool through secondary level, alongside other mandatory policies.
• Ensure sustainability throughout the school food system, including food production, procurement, transport, storage, preparation and waste disposal.