School lunches don’t have to be Michelin-star, but they should be healthy – Editorial
There’s something about a critical report on New Zealand’s school lunches being published on the same day as our first Michelin star awardees that leaves an interesting taste on the palate.
Tuesday night’s glitzy event confirmed diners with disposable incomes are well-served in New Zealand, with 14 restaurants awarded a prestigious star, and one (Essence, of Queenstown) two stars.
The Michelin Guide gave out zero stars when it launched in Saudi Arabia, so New Zealand should be proud to have produced so many gastronomic gems in our first sampling.
We should also feel proud of our Healthy School Lunch Programme, which delivers meals to more than 200,000 growing Kiwi kids each school day. That’s no small feat.
Nor is the coalition Government’s achievement in doing it for about $130 million less than the other guys.
But a new report by the Auditor-General has laid out some of the sacrifices it took to get there.
For one, the Ministry of Education found that only about half the meals assessed met its nutritional standards.
The School Lunch Collective, using a different measurement, disputed this, saying it was 69% in term three and 75% in term four.
The report criticised the transition from the old programme to the new. Former suppliers were left in the lurch and a messy procurement was marred by scope changes, unfairness claims and inadequate contingency planning.
Behind the scenes, “tensions” were boiling over between ministry staff and the office of the cut-price programme’s champion, Associate Education Minister David Seymour.
The report paints a picture of a rollout even more tumultuous than suggested by the many teething problems that hit the headlines: missed deliveries, “inedible” meals fed to a pig named Crackles, a molten cottage pie that caused second-degree burns, and so on.
Inconsistencies and gaps in performance monitoring and measuring were flagged, as was the increasing rate of wasted food this year.
“Although the overall cost of the Programme might have reduced, if students are not eating or only partially eating meals, or if the meals are not nutritionally sound, the Programme might not be achieving all its intended outcomes,” the report warned.
Seymour hit back, saying adding more vegetables to improve the nutrition made fewer kids want to eat the meals. He said sometimes “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t” regarding the issue of balancing nutrition and waste.
Looks like there’s still work to do to find the sweet spot between woke sushi and marmite sandwiches.
The contract required that at least 80% of meals meet the required nutritional standard, among other performance measures.
Seymour should hold the contractor to account to close the gaps, rather than make excuses.
No one is expecting Michelin-star school lunches.
But if we’re going to call it the Healthy School Lunch Programme, then we should expect healthy school lunches.