Abstract
The School Lunch Collective (SLC), the major provider supplying 51% of students in Ka Ora, Ka Ako | Healthy School Lunches Programme, has been hitting the headlines for poor quality, meal mislabelling, inappropriate special dietary meals, missed deliveries, and overheated meals. However, one aspect that is getting less airtime is nutritional quality. We assessed the lunches provided by SLC against National Nutrient Reference Values, international benchmarks for energy, and the Ministry of Education’s Nutrition Standards for Ka Ora, Ka Ako. The SLC lunches only provided about half the energy expected for a school lunch and less than a fifth of the daily energy requirements for growing teens. Despite all providers being contractually obliged to meet the Ministry of Education’s Nutrition Standards, none of the 13 meals offered by the SLC met them. (Only 13 out of 53 SLC meals had sufficient information to assess them.) Along with the other well-published shortcomings, the nutritional value of the lunches provided by the SLC needs to be closely scrutinised.