Creating a new vision for what school lunches can be in Canada

For the second instalment of our blog series on global school food initiatives, we spoke with Brent Mansfield, a passionate food educator and campaigner heading calls for a school food revolution in Canada.

Tell me about your work as a food campaigner and educator.

I’ve always been involved in food activism in one way or another. Five years ago I became an Edible Education Teacher at Lord Roberts Elementary in Vancouver. It was around that time I worked with two innovative local charities, Growing Chefs and Fresh Roots to co-found LunchLAB. The programme, currently running in three schools, pairs students with professional chefs to cook and serve meals for themselves and their classmates each day.

With LunchLAB, we’re creating a new vision for what school lunches can be in Canada - deeply integrated educationally, but also serving kids delicious and healthy food that they will actually eat.

Why is there a need for LunchLAB? What is the gap you’re filling?

In Canada, most children bring lunch bags into school each day, as we don’t have a national school food programme like in the UK and many other countries around the world. There are NGOs working across Canada trying to help out in different ways and there are some large cities that have developed student nutrition programmes, but for the most part, it's patchwork. And like any patchwork, there are total gaps. So unless we can get public investment from various levels of government, it's going to continue to be a patchwork and it's not going to be equitable and transformative.

What’s happening in Canada right now to help change this?

Across Canada, lots of non-profits have come together to form the Coalition of Healthy School Food, which advocates for a healthy school food programme to cover all of Canada. This is in fact something the federal government promised to fund a couple of years ago, but this pledge still hasn’t appeared in a budget. So, I recently organised a campaign with my students to bring attention to the urgent need for a nationwide school food programme. I recently ran 200 laps around my school, attracting some great media coverage, while the students wrote to the Prime Minister and their MP. I will be going to Ottawa this week, the nation’s capital, to run laps on the lawn in front of Parliament to once again ask the government of Canada to honour its commitment to invest $200 million per year for five years.

Altogether, there are over 270 non-profits involved in the Coalition of Healthy School Food across all 10 provinces and three territories. There are 56 member organisations in British Columbia (B.C.), which is where we are, and our work persuaded our provincial government to make its largest single investment in school food programmes in Canadian history - $214m over three years. That funding just landed in B.C. schools this September and is helping to develop new school food programmes in all 60 school districts across the province.

What provision is there for children who don’t have any food to bring to school?

Aside from B.C. some other provinces fund some school food programmes, but for the most part, particularly in a lot of rural and Indigenous communities, there are just total gaps. It pains me to imagine places where there are no programmes to support vulnerable children. I know stories of some principals making 50 sandwiches every morning because students are arriving with little to no food. We need to be leveraging school food programmes nationwide to make sure children are well nourished and ready to learn.

What can you tell me about the quality of food children are often bringing in?

One of my arguments for universal access to school meals is this; it's great that there are a handful of families that have the time and ability to make sure that their child's lunch is nutritious and delicious, but that’s not most families. With the affordability crisis in Canada, how many families are working extra jobs to make ends meet? Kids will bring in a sandwich and a giant bag of Doritos at lunchtime - so obviously, significant concern. The other thing is, they’re all going to be bringing in cold food. I hate eating cold lunches myself. As a teacher, I can warm up my lunch in a microwave or the stove. The kids don’t have that option.

Now that we’re seeing school food programmes being introduced, we’re going to need standards to guide that.

How do you believe nutritious school meals affect a child's learning and overall well-being?

Speaking of my experience of LunchLAB, yes I’m sure students go back to class, and they're ready to learn because they've had a delicious, nutritious meal. But the impact goes further than that. Eating together at lunch gives students the time to slow down and connect with their peers and adults who care about them.

Research shows if a student feels like they have adults in the school who care about them, they're much more likely to graduate. What’s one of the best ways to show kids you care about them? Feed them, listen to them, involve them and make them feel like they matter. I think we have an opportunity with school food to do that in a way that nothing else does.

My students taking part in LunchLAB are deeply invested, because they're involved in every aspect of the kitchen - from cooking to serving their peers. I want this programme to be a beacon, showing that it's not just about feeding kids. If we just look at feeding kids, we're going for the lowest common denominator, Worth doing? Of course. But we have a massive opportunity to make it a huge learning experience, connecting to food education across the curriculum.

Tell me more about your role as an Edible Education Teacher.

My classroom is our multipurpose room with kitchen and lunchroom space, and a school garden outside, where we have 28 garden beds. We grow a variety of vegetables, including kale, carrots, peas, radishes, potatoes, and many more. Coastal B.C. has quite a mild climate so there is a lot we can grow, and even harvest throughout the year. We’re also developing an Indigenous foodscape with native edible species like salmon berries and thimbleberries, important food plants for local Indigenous peoples. Through LunchLAB, students are meaningfully involved in preparing a full salad bar and hot entrees, including a variety of culturally diverse options such as curries, stir-fries and burritos.

I teach 24 classes each week, which includes students from kindergarten all the way up to grade seven (five to 12 years old). So it makes for some wild days, but I love that. And I love that I get to teach what I believe to be the most important thing.

I find kindergarten to grade four children to be most open and receptive to garden-based education. It’s the most magical tool in connecting them to the natural world and getting them to try new foods. Grade five to seven students, who I’ve been teaching for several years now, are more into the LunchLAB side of things.

We know children are much more likely to eat food when they’re involved hands-on in the kitchen. I have tons of anecdotal evidence to demonstrate that, but there’s also research to show nutrition education without experiential education, in terms of cooking and growing, is not nearly as effective. 

How prominent is food education in schools across Canada?

It’s not massively prominent. It's not directly mandated in the curriculum, especially in an experiential and engaging way, but there are learning outcomes in our physical and health education. But that's also the next piece I'm hoping we can change. That could mean embedding it within the Education Act, so it’s more formally in the curriculum, or we simply build up the capacity of teachers, providing them with the skills and imagination to inspire the next generation.

Your school garden looks incredible. How many other schools have something like that?

In Vancouver, 60% of schools have gardens. How many of those are dynamic learning spaces? Much lower than that. But they're there and they could be. And that's where, again, profile, imagination, resources and support are lacking. But I think this has the potential to really explode and it needs to.