Politics in default

When it comes to school meals, “the hat is on fire”

Healthy hot meals are still in short supply in Austria's schools. Both politicians and parents are to blame for this.

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School meals play a key role in children's eating habits and therefore their health. Despite this, the topic is of little interest to politicians in Austria. However, parents could often do more to ensure that their children eat in a way that is good for them.

Last year, much later than other EU countries, Austria committed to guaranteeing children a warm, healthy meal every school day in its National Action Plan. However, hardly anything has happened. Yet "the hat is on fire" when it comes to healthy nutrition, especially for schoolchildren, warned Volkshilfe, the association Zukunft Essen, the nutrition institute SIPCAN and the platform Kinderrechte at a joint press conference on Monday.

Little more than lip service from political parties
Despite the parties paying lip service to how important the issue is to them, a party survey by Zukunft Essen revealed that they hardly want to follow up their words with action. The FPÖ, for example, even admits that the issue has "very low priority" in the next legislative period. The ÖVP is completely silent on the subject. The NEOS are also skeptical when it comes to legally binding minimum standards for school meals. Only the SPÖ and the Greens have vowed to bring about an improvement.

Reference to Sweden

The organizations represented at the press conference agree that school meals play a central role in people's future health. For more than 80,000 children in Austria, this is the only way to eat a balanced diet. The effects can be seen in Sweden, for example, where school meals have been a matter of course for 80 years. It has been proven that children develop into healthier adults with a longer life expectancy - and even a higher level of education and correspondingly higher income.

Vienna only average in Austria-wide statistics
However, political will alone is not enough, as the example of Vienna shows: although the federal capital has been committed to free meals at all-day compulsory schools since 2023, it is only average in SIPCAN's Austria-wide statistics - if at all. According to these statistics, one third of schools in Vienna do not provide hot meals at all. This puts Vienna below the average. In Upper Austria, children receive a hot meal in 85 percent of schools, in Burgenland it is even 92 percent.

In those schools where food is available, it is also often in short supply from a nutritional point of view: Vienna is just average, with 36% of the meals on offer classified as healthy. In Burgenland, the figure is 55% and in Upper Austria it is 50%. In any case, 46% of the food on offer in Viennese schools consists only of a school buffet, the rest is dominated by catering. Only 18 percent of Viennese schools offer cooked meals, while the average across Austria is 31 percent.

Thinking outside the box when it comes to eating habits
However, parents are partly responsible for the situation, as only 17% of children in Vienna make use of school meals, which is also well below the average of 31%. Manuel Schätzer from SIPCAN encourages both children and parents to take advantage of healthy food options, also to "look beyond what is on offer at home". Elisabeth Schaffelhofer-Garcia Marquez from the Children's Rights Network also believes that, in addition to appealing to those responsible, families should also "start with themselves".