Technical guidance was published on Wednesday 22 February to help member states’ authorities provide schools with healthy food in order to tackle obesity among children and young people. The guide, “Public Procurement of Food for Health” is the fruit of the combined labours of the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety and the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU (working group on childhood obesity).
It provides technical guidance, for example, to help national authorities draft clear specifications on foods and food services to be procured to make the healthy food the default choice. It will be regularly updated.
The report covers key food groups such as fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy products, cakes, sweets and nutrients such as salt, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, and micronutrients like iron, calcium and vitamin C. It also includes specifications for food preparation and catering services in general.
European Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis and his counterpart for Education and Research Tibor Navracsics are both singing from the same hymn sheet. “Healthy food is essential for the well-being and development of children and young people and schools are an excellent place to make the healthy food choice, the easy choice. This EU research tool will help schools to do exactly that – provide kids with food that enables them to grow and develop in the best way possible”, they state in a oppress release.
In 2014, the JRC published an overview of European policies on food in schools, aimed at political decision-makers, educators and researchers.
The technical guidance is available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/public-procurement-food-health-technical-report.pdf (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)