The Sunday Long Read

Free To Read - Scrooge Mc Seymour And His Miserly School Lunch Programme 3/11/24

Thanks to the more than 50 Paid subscribers who liked this morning’s post it is now free for everyone to read.

A couple of weeks ago David Seymour revealed the school lunches he says will save the taxpayer $107 million a year. I haven’t written about it until now because I wanted to gather together some facts which I hope will be of interest to you.

First, a bit of background

The Ka Ora,Ka Ako school lunch programme was launched by Labour in 2019 and currently feeds about 235,000 students at schools and kura facing some of the greatest poverty issues. But, during the last election campaign Seymour attacked the spending as “wasteful” spending and urged National to abandon it when they got into power. 

So, it is no surprise that Seymour ( true to his ideology of self- interest) as Minister for Education would come up with his plan to save $107 million a year by making it nigh on impossible for schools to run their own internal lunch programmes and instead accept externally produced pre -package meals.

Here is some of what our children will be offered for lunch under Seymour’s plan- if the school has the facility to heat them.

Don’t they look yummy? Highy processed. Nothing fresh.

Yet, David Seymour was estatic.

"I'm absolutely stoked “ he said at the Beehive launch “and I think a lot of kids will be stoked when they see this.”

Really?

Let’s have a look at what other countries are offering their children for lunch .

Fish on a bed of arugula, pasta with tomato sauce, caprese salad, baguette and some grapes.

Baked chicken over orzo, stuffed grape leaves, tomato and cucumber salad, fresh oranges, and Greek yogurt with pomegranate seeds

Pork with mixed veggies, black beans and rice, salad, bread and baked plantains

Fish soup, tofu over rice, kimchi and fresh veggies.

Pea soup, beet salad, carrot salad, bread and pannakkau (dessert pancake) with fresh berries.

If you want more examples go to https://www.huffpost.com/entry/school-lunches-around-the-world_n_6746164 (I have also personally observed and can vouch for the quality of the school lunches in three of above countries) but I think you get the point which is that other governments in other countries don’t skimp on the food they feed their children at school. The quality of the meals they serve is a measure of the value they place in the health of their kids .

Seymour’s $3 stodge offer tells you:

(a) how little he knows about child health and obescity

(b) how little he values our nation’s tamariki

(c )how little he understand about how local economies work

(d) how little he understands the social and cultural benefits of the school centred preparation of lunches vs an external provider.

Let me explain.

I’ve filmed school lunch programmes in Sweden and Finland and in the coming days I will post a couple of videos to show you the difference between what Seymour’s external provider model will deliver vs what children in Scandinavian countries experience from lunches prepared in their own schools.

First of all, every Swedish and Finnish school has a restaurant (they don’t call it a canteen) with its own fully equipped kitchen.These are of course built by local builders, kitted out by local suppliers and staffed by local cooks, chefs and kitchen staff who prepare the meals.

Note the word “local” in that last sentence. Because local people are employed in all these employment areas the money is goes directly back into the local economy.

With the introduction of Seymour’s exterior provider model many of the local people currently employed by schools, which currently have internal lunch programmes, will be made redundant and, in these times of high unemployment, many will become beneficiaries, or, in the derogatory language of the right wing faction of our society that Seymour represents, “a burden on the tax payer”.

Did that consideration go into his $107 million savings calculation? I doubt it.

The external suppliers do of course employ a number of New Zealanders, so who is going to make these new lunches that Seymour believes children will be “stoked” about and where will the profits go?

Well, this is where it gets a bit messy.

According to the Ministry of Education site they have “partnered with The School Lunch Collective, led by Compass and including Gilmours – a large wholesale foodservice provider in New Zealand, and over 17 other food manufacturers to deliver healthy lunches to schools.”

(Ref: https://www.education.govt.nz/bulletins/school-leaders/22-10-24-0 )

Now, while this is a long Sunday read I’m sure you appreciate I can’t go into the backgrounds of all the companies involved in The School Lunch Collective because that would require writing a research paper as opposed to a Substack article. And while it is true that a number of the companies involved are locally owned, as the quote from the Ministry indicates, the collective is “led by Compass” – so, who are they?

According to Compass Group New Zealand Ltd’s own website they are wholly owned by Compass Group PLC, a huge British multinational contract food service company who are very profitable.

The UK based company’s 2023 Annual Report celebrates that  Compass Group PLC “delivered excellent organic revenue growth of 18.8%”.. and ..“ this resulted in underlying operating profit increasing by 29.6%”… “on a statutory basis, revenue increased by 21.6% to £31,028,000,000  (NZ $64,056,000,000 ) and operating profit was up 26.1% to £1,891,000,000 ”

https://www.compass-group.com/content/dam/compass-group/corporate/oar-2023/annual-report-2023.pdf

Compass is in New Zealand then to make a profit, so even at $3 a meal they will be making a buck, and a lot of that buck will be going overseas.

That’s the only point I’ll make here about Compass today. If you want to read a bit about what they say about themselves, you can find it here:

https://compass-group.co.nz/about-us/

 If you want to read an article about the alleged culture of the parent UK  company and some of the scandals associated with them you can find one here :

https://corporatewatch.org/broken-compass-the-scandals-of-compass-group/

however I haven’t had time to verify their reporting so make of it what you will.

The point I want to make today is that there is much more to an internally produced school lunch programme than is reflected in the simple $3 dollar cost per meal touted by David Seymour, because what isn’t calculated in the Education Ministry’s decision to push an external provider model, are the many immediate benefits to the many local economies throughout our country , the social benefits to the culture of the school, and the long term health benefits to the nation that you see in the Scandinavian school based model.

I’ve already covered the local economy benefits, so what are some of the social and cultural benefits that are hard to put a dollar value on?

Firstly there is the benefit to the school culture that I observed in those I visited in Sweden and Finland. Teachers sit down with the kids at lunchtime because the meals are excellent and as we all know eating together is a bonding thing. I’m not convinced teachers will want to eat the meals (pictured above) that Seymour’s plan will provide. The avaiability of good food is also an incentive for kids to come to school so truency rates are low.

Then there’s the fact that in Scandinavian schools the kids make their own decisions about what to eat by choosing from the smorgasbord of healthy foods provided . So, if they have an allergy, they can choose the foods that don’t cause them a problem, or if they have a cultural issue with say, eating pork or beef they can choose vegan foods. In other words the children then get to learn how to make good food choices that will hold them in good stead as adults.

You see, the Swedes and Finns are very savvy about the long term health benefits of their good food school lunch programmes. By not serving heavily processed lunches  they know they are educating the palate of the nation to like food that is low in salt and sugar -the long term aim being to reduce diet- related illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes in adult life.

How much does it cost for the New Zealand taxpayer to provide medical treatments and hospital care for diet- related illnesses?

Answer- I don’t know because I currently can find where that figure has been calculated (assuming it even exists!).

What I do know is that long term health benefit of educating young people to enjoy a healthy diet is not part of Seymour’s $3 a meal calculation.

In short, cheapest is never best. and our children, our Tamariki, deserve the best.

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