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Classroom Practice/Program

Good and Nourishing School Lunch Makes

Smarter Pupils

By Marianne Skardéus

The history of school lunches in Sweden goes back more than 100 years.
Initially, school lunches were only offered to the poorest pupils—and
mostly porridge was on the menu. Now the school lunch is modernized
with several different dishes to choose from and a generous salad buffet.
Today there is also inscribed in the School Act that all pupils/students
should be offered a free and nourishing school lunch. Throughout the
history, of course, the purpose has remained the same: to provide energy
and nourishment that will allow a student to profit by the school day.
On a sunny day in September 2023, I met with Ida Henriksson, who
is employed by the city of Skövde (in the south of Sweden) as developer
of the public meals. Ida is an ardent advocate of the importance of
nourishing food. It is a delight to listen to Ida and her heavy commitment
to her task to improve the public meals in Skövde. Ida (IS) answered all
my (MS) questions in detail and with a delightful empathy. Ida Henriksson, Developer of
Public Meals, Skövde, Sweden
MS: Have there always been school lunches in Sweden? ida.henriksson@skovde.se
IH: School lunches have existed for a long time in Sweden: They started to
be served already during the second part of the 19th century. At that time, mostly porridge was served and
only for the poorest of the pupils. The purpose of the school lunches has been to give the pupils energy and
nourishment to manage to get through the school day and to counteract malnutrition.
Since 1997, there is a law in the Swedish School Act demanding that compulsory schools (which
serve students 6–16 years of age) shall offer school lunches free of charge, and since 2011, there has
also been a demand that the school lunches shall be nourishing. Only
three countries in the world have statutory school lunches: Estonia,
Finland, and Sweden.

MS: What do we know about the effects of childhood nutrition?
IH: Professor Dan-Olof Rooth, professor in Economics at the Institute
for Social Research (SOFI) at the University of Stockholm Sweden,
collaborated on research regarding pupils who were a part of the
school lunch program in the 1960s: Long-term Effects of Childhood
Nutrition; Evidence from School Lunch Reform (Lundborg et al.,
2022). He and his colleagues found that the students were not only
satisfied for the moment but also throughout the school day. In
adulthood, they had increased one centimeter in height compared
to those pupils who could not be part of the school lunch program.
Furthermore, those pupils completed a longer education and more
often studied at university—and, on top of this, they more often had a
higher average income than those pupils who had not had any school
Sweden’s National Guidelines for lunches during their education at compulsory school.
Mealtimes at School

34 · Volume 90-4