School Meals Are Evolving: Has the Evidence Kept Up?

narrative review, no pooled sample

Primary and secondary students worldwide; notes school meals reach 61% of primary students in high-income countries and a smaller share elsewhere.

Narrative policy review in the World Bank Research Observer covering education, health, nutrition, social protection and food-systems objectives of school meal programmes. Useful for framing the multi-objective nature of these programmes - which is exactly why a positive program effect is not a nutrition effect - but it does not pool estimates and does not grade designs.

There is a strong evidence base for school meals across multiple objectives, but with specific gaps in evidence of effectiveness and a particular lack of clarity around costs. Programme objectives have broadened from calories to learning, healthy diets, social protection and support for smallholder farmers, and the evidence has not kept pace with that broadening.

Not addressed; the review does not engage with confounding of observational estimates.