Who remembers what they ate for lunch in elementary school?

I remember a lot of turkey sausage sandwiches and apples or oranges and a carton of milk from the school milk program. I also remember thinking that I was the only kid who didn't get the rolled up fruit snacks or other fun foods and feeling sorry for myself. When I got older and my parents had given up on packing my lunch, I remember throwing a pack of instant noodles in my backpack or walking to nearby stores when I had a bit of money to buy whatever was cheap and tasty.

Well, now I am the parent of two older teens and for the last 14 years, I've had the distinct pleasure of trying to figure out what to send to school with them every day. There are three critical criteria for their lunches. must be served at room temperature, neither hot nor cold. Must be eaten in 15 minutes.

And most important of all, they must be willing to eat it while sitting next to the kids who are eating food that looks oh so much more enticing.

Oh, and it must include those fish shaped crackers that parents hate. You know the ones.

Some variation of these rules will be familiar to all lunch packing parents, but when you've spent years studying kids and food, it's particularly frustrating. As a nutrition researcher, I have seen how poorly children in Canada eat during the school day. And I believe it does not need to be this way.

Typically, in rich countries like Canada, kids have access to a school meal each day. Most of our peer countries began doing this sometime after the Second World War. During that war and in the early post-war days, there was growing pressure on the government of Canada to do what was being done elsewhere and start a national school food program. At the time, the government decided to implement family allowances paid directly to mothers, a social policy intended to encourage women not to work outside the home. There was even f public focus on condemning working mothers in part so men coming home from the war would find full employment. The postworld war II family allowance was intended to encourage children to go home to a warm and nourishing motherpared meal.

Today, there are a few parents who stay home all day, mothers or fathers. Over time, the lunchbox or the brown paper bag has become the norm.

Since the 1950s, we have seen dramatic changes in the foods available to us.

Today, almost half of what we eat falls into the category of ultrarocessed foods, and we're beginning to understand the health consequences of this. Recent research shows, for example, that more than a third of new cases and deaths from heart disease and stroke can be attributed to ultrarocessed food consumption. That same research found that just a 20% decrease in the consumption of ultrarocessed foods would reduce 3,000 deaths in Canada each year from heart disease and stroke.

But given the foods that are most readily available and fit into our busy lives, it would be challenging to make that change. But, and this is important, I argue that if every child in Canada received a lunch cooked from basic ingredients at school every day, so made from whole vegetables, fruit, grains, beans, meat, and dairy, we could achieve that 20% reduction with little change at home. Let me explain. Kids in Canada, both rich and poor, eat poorly during the school day. In particular, they don't eat eat enough vegetables and fruit, and they consume too many ultrarocessed foods. Think back to your own bag lunches of granola bars, pudding cups, and so on. Research shows that school food programs can play a role in increasing vegetable and fruit consumption. And if paid cooks prepare lunches from basic ingredients, this would reduce ultrarocessed foods eaten during the school day. There's a lot of research from countries around the world, including some from here in Canada, showing that food provided in school lunch programs is of better nutritional quality than food brought from home.

I would bet most of us agree that we want better nutrition for our kids. And the moms and dads I know would be happy not to pack a lunch that they don't feel great about or that just gets thrown out at the end of the day.

So what's stopping us as a society from choosing the healthier option that is backed by research? I'm sure a long list of hurdles comes to mind including costs, labor, sourcing food, equipment, and so on. But I think at the root of this issue is the way we think or don't think about how our kids eat. Maybe we were just used to doing school lunch this way and we can't fathom how it could be different. But what would happen if we were willing to change the way we think? For every challenge we face as a country in revolutionizing school food, my team's research has already shown that there is an example of how that challenge has been overcome elsewhere. While homepack lunches have been the status quo for decades now, only recently has public policy begun to change. In 2024, the government of Canada announced the first funded national school food program and released its first national school food policy. By spring of 2025, all provinces and territories and First Nations governments had signed agreements for the first three years of funding, meaning all have signed on to the program, received their initial funding, and most have begun distributing it. The fall 2025 federal budget included a plan for legislation making the program permanent, rare occurrence in this country. It seems we are at the beginning of a new era when it comes to school day eating in Canada.

This policy and funding are an important start, but I believe to do this right, we need to ask, what are the best practices for school food globally? How can we learn from the successes and mistakes of school food programs around the world? How can we create school food programs that are appropriate for the diversity of communities that exist from coast to coast to coast? I've come to believe that we need to first change the way as a society we think about what and how kids eat, what that means, and what can be gained from that shift. Society has changed a lot since World War II, and I think it's time for school day lunch to catch up. I recently visited school food programs in six cities in France, England, and Scotland, and I talked to experts, practitioners, and policy makers. I was inspired by places where high-quality school food programs are taken for granted rather than debated. One model really stood out to me. I came to understand the particular strength of the French model from a social point of view. Typically, a group of kids from the same class or a group of about eight kindergarteners, for example, eat around a table with an adult called an animator who talks about what they are eating, who models respectful conversation and eating behavior, and who encourages kids to try unfamiliar foods. The meal time is calm and relaxed, and importantly, there's lots of time to eat. This approach is an excellent example of what we call common salad in the academic literature. shared experiences and social interactions around food that can support feeling connected to others and a sense of belonging, which is important for children's mental health and ability to do well in school.

Research has shown that the best school food programs around the world have a sense of belonging built into them.

Now, some of you in the crowd likely have a few picky eaters at home, and at this point, you may be thinking that these school food programs simply wouldn't work for your chicken nugget obsessed offspring.

Many kids do struggle to try new foods, but we know being exposed to new foods frequently, and eating in a social context with peers increases new food acceptance by children.

I can't tell you how many parents of daycare age kids have told me stories about how much more adventurous their children's eating is at daycare than it is at home. This is the value of social eating and something we could replicate in schools.

Research from other countries shows that pickiness decreases over time when kids participate in school meals. And my research team has seen this in new school food programs we have helped establish here in Saskatoon in partnership with Saskatoon public schools.

But it's not just learning from other countries. We already have some amazing examples in Canada of innovative school food programs that build on best practices. One of the best is the NanoK Mituin program at Muskichis Education Schools Commission where four First Nations not far from Edmonton have created a program in their 10 schools that provides daily breakfast, lunch and snacks cooked from basic ingredients and often purchased from local farmers.

They employ local people and train high school students to become cooks and then graduate to jobs in the program. They started their program as a pilot, but noticed improved attendance, a calmer social atmosphere, and even more kids graduating. And so, the four First Nations decided to make it permanent.

Now, they are serving as an example for others by hosting researchers like me and other First Nations communities to learn from their work. They're even beginning to produce some of their own food served in the program.

The Nano Mituin program highlights how school food can be about community economic development, training and job opportunities, investing in local farmers, and indigenous community control over what the young generation is eating. Well-designed programs can create a strong sense of community at school, which can spill over into improved mental health, can contribute to better educational outcomes, better behavior at school, as well as improved nutrition. Research from Sweden has shown that children who participated in a universal quality school food program were healthier, taller, and even had at had higher lifetime earnings compared to their peers who did not receive the meals. And from Sweden and China, we know that like with universal child care, where there is a universal school food program, we see more women working more, which benefits the economy.

Mothers expressed that having school prepared lunches reduces the mental load they experience.

And that mental load is real.

Women in partnered households with a male spouse still do almost twothirds of the housework, which includes preparing children's lunches. I argue that school food programs are also feminist programs that invest in families, children, and communities.

At the end of World War II, about 25% of women worked outside the home. Well, today it's more than 80%. Compared to the end of World War II, the problems we face as a society are also very different. Sometimes when I think about the system that we have that is typical in Canada, I think about how inefficient it really is. Every individual family figuring out what to send to school, going out, buying that food, preparing it, packing it, and then way too a often sharing, throwing parts of it away when it comes home uneaten. And yet at the same time, we agree that eating is a social act fundamental to human cultures. We know that eating is something best done in community with people we care about. Isn't it time to try a new approach? What could happen if we took advantage of the wonderful opportunity of school food programs? A place for our children to be together, share the meeting of a fundamental human need, and build community.

Imagine the positive impact on our children and their futures. Not to not to mention benefits for families and society. My research has found that a well-fed school is a calm and happy school. Something we all want for our children.

[applause] [cheering]