The Government’s Child Health Strategy, promised for the Spring, has been quietly shelved until the autumn.

This is despite Gordon Brown’s Cabinet Office Strategy Unit saying that "
The public health and diet challenge is urgent, compelling, and goes beyond
obesity" and "existing patterns of food consumption will result in our society
being loaded with a heavy burden of obesity and diet-related ill health".

Meanwhile, the most important lever the Government has to improve child health - the school meal service - is at risk of collapse. The majority of school caterers are running at deficits they can no longer sustain.
The Food for Life Partnership, with the backing of the Local Authority Caterers Association, Caroline Walker Trust and Sustain, has sent an open letter to Secretary of State Ed Balls, calling on him to implement Six Steps to Transform School Food Culture without further delay.

The letter says that if urgent action is not taken the Government risks losing this key opportunity to fight obesity and climate change by changing young people’s eating habits, and urges the Government to see school meals as an education service, not a commercial business.

The groups are calling on the Government to adopt Six Steps to Transform School Food Culture:

• Every pupil to eat healthy and climate-friendly school meals by 2015.
• School meals to be run as an Education Service, not a commercial business. The Government should reinstate the obligation on local authorities to ‘provide a school meal suitable in all respects as a main meal of the day’ by 2011 – this means 4025 new school kitchens.
• 50p per pupil per school meal from Government to achieve a £1 ingredient spend while allowing take-up to rise.
• More paid hours for school cooks to prepare fresh food.
• At least 12 hours of cooking lessons a year for every pupil up to key stage 3 by 2011.
• Every pupil to have direct experience of food growing and production, in school gardens and on farms, by 2011.