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free school meals in school holidays

There is (October 2020) much debate about free school meals and school holidays. A powerful campaign by Marcus Rashford has caught the public's hearts and much is written about the issue in terms of equity and inclusion.

This page explores another dimension of the importance of food for children, at home, at school, during the holidays, and is another set of reasons to support feeding free school meals reliably to school age children in need, throughout the year.

Put very simply we have a generation of children potentially hurt by CoVID-19. It has impacted everywhere from their attendance at school to their "A" level examinations. Everyone wants to minimise the lost opportunities and do the best we can for all those children.

In parallel we (in the UK) are approaching a major economic change - BREXIT. We need every mind to be at its sharpest, we need the very best ingenuity, talent, excellence, creativity, imagination & deep knowledge as we go forwards to face this new challenge.

Regardless of the politics or humanity of the debate it is unanswerable that if we both need and want our children to be the best they can possibly be, then the impact of hunger on their cognitive processes is a problem that needs exploring and then solving.

The UK Whitehall government are spending £1 billion on a "catch-up plan to tackle the problem of lost teaching time" and clearly it would be counter productive if the children who need that catch-up are avoidably below their best through hunger.

So let us review the evidence. Does humger impact of young minds unhelpfully?

There is a considerable body of research. It is not unequivocal - so many variables: age, history, culture, duration... Below though are just a few consensual takeaways, from many.
Follow the links for papers if you need to:

• we know that hunger impacts on some non cognitive performance at school for example classroom behaviour. From Economics of Education Review vol 30, 2011. Larry and Howard

"The time horizon of our analysis affords insight into factors underlying children's formation of non-cognitive skills and the efficiency of classroom-based educational production in elementary school. Overall, we find significant negative developmental effects for children with food insecurity at home".

• a number of Army studies explored whether hunger made for better soldiers in action (hypothesis: hunger makes hunters?) and it is hard to be conclusive from many studies - for example small amounts of hunger may or may not be helpful depending on what you need soldiers to be doing. But one detail is very clear - for example in Impact of Underconsumption on Cognitive Performance, Mary Z Mays, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, 1996

"Consumption of 50 percent or less of requirements will significantly degrade cognitive performance"

• and we know that it is complex - with food insecurity impacting in a number of non direct ways in addition to the impact on cognitive potential. "Food Insecurity and Cognitive Function in Middle to Older Adulthood: A Systematic Review" Muzi Na, Nan Dou, Naiwen Ji, Dixin Xie, Jie Huang, Katherine L Tucker, Xiang Gao. Advances in Nutrition 2019.

"In addition, Food Insecurity contributes to overall family stress and may act on cognition through caregiver psychological distress, variation in early brain development, and changes in child mental health. Through these indirect diet and stress pathways, Food Insecurity has been associated with a detrimental impact on the cognitive potential in children. This negative association may extend to later-life cognition, as suggested by the consistent cross-sectional associations in this review"

• and pretty much everyone seems in agreement that restricted food in the very earliest year/s has a damaging impact on congitive performance that can last into adulthood.


BRAINFOOD

However, the negative impact of hunger is only one dimension. At UCJC in Madrid we have been exploring, in a school-student led research project, using an extensive literature review to identify the best food ingedients to enhance cognitive function. The children have produced a very useful Brain Food recipe book and have been working with parents, school caterers and others on this Brainfood project.

In passing, it may be of interest that where food and wellbeing had not had much traction, food and cognition has achieved very considerable engagement - a backdoor to weelbing maybe too?

Anyway, the BRAINFOOD project is here, the recipe booklet (English version) is here and is recommended.

So in short:

 

 

 

SProf Stephen Heppell
this page created 26/10/20