Almost a third of Spain’s school canteens are offering students too many portions of fried food each week, while more than a third are not providing them with enough fresh vegetables, according to a study from the country’s national food agency.
The findings, based on figures from 2023, come as Spain’s socialist-led government prepares legislation that aims to reduce obesity by targeting unhealthy, sugary foods and making the food agency’s recommendations obligatory.
A 2019 study found that 40.6% of Spanish children aged six to nine were over their recommended weight, of whom 17.3% were classed as obese.
According to the report, a third of school menus are not overseen by people with nutritional qualifications, and 29.2% of schools are serving up three of more portions of fried food a week, exceeding the recommended maximum of two portions. It also found that more than 70% of schools were not following the recommendation to fry food in olive oil or sunflower oil high in oleic acid.
Meanwhile, 37% of schools are serving two or fewer portions of fresh vegetables a week, against the recommended three or four portions. About 7% of school canteens never offer fish, while 16% do not offer the recommended four or five weekly portions of fruit. It also found that a third of canteens offer pre-cooked dishes four times a week or more.
Reacting to the report, Spain’s consumer and social rights ministry said it was working on a royal decree that would make the food agency’s recommendations binding “and tighten up the criteria on the foods that are most damaging to health”.
It added: “The royal decree will ban the serving of sugary drinks – or other alternatives to water – during school mealtimes, a measure that takes into account another of the reports findings: that there are fewer and fewer schools that only offer water at mealtimes.”
The ministry said that while 99.7% of schools offered only water at mealtimes in 2021, the percentage had fallen to below 85% in 2023.
In a post on Bluesky, Spain’s consumer affairs minister, Pablo Bustinduy, said that action needed to be taken to stop socio-economic factors determining children’s health.
“Thirty per cent of canteens serve three or more portions of fried food a week,” he wrote. “The canteens royal decree will establish common criteria that follow international nutritional standards. Childhood health can’t depend on postcodes.”
Nearly a third of primary school-age children in Europe are either overweight or obese, while almost a quarter of children in the EU are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
In October 2023, a coalition of experts said children across Europe needed to get at least one nutritious school meal a day if governments wanted to tackle rising obesity rates, prevent chronic illnesses and reduce social inequalities.
With the cost of living crisis stretching many families on the continent beyond breaking point, members of a four-year EU-funded initiative, focused on healthy eating, said action was urgently needed to ensure all European children could rely on at least one healthy meal every day.
“Once you say that every child needs to get a healthy school meal every day – whether they’re, rich, poor, in a deprived neighbourhood or wherever – that’s a minimum standard that would make quite a lot of sense in Europe,” said Peter Defranceschi, a member of the SchoolFood4Change project.
