YOU can't do anything these days without running up against the message of how important it is to eat healthily. Staff canteens grade their meals by how healthy they are, supermarkets are offering deals on fruit and veg and the "five a day" message smiles at you from every bottle of fruit juice you buy.
But never is the message so important than in schools, where the quality of meals is forever under fire.
Only a few years ago it attracted national attention when Jamie Oliver highlighted the shocking salt content of Turkey Twizzlers and the amoun
t of junk food kids eat at lunch and break times.
And just recently, Edinburgh had its very own school meals row when nurseries started serving young children packed lunches which included processed cheese, fish paste, flavoured milk, jelly and cakes instead of a hot meal.
The council's own deputy leader Steve Cardownie described the quality of food on offer as "scandalous" and parents were outraged children were missing out on what, for many of them, was the only home-cooked, hot meal they ate a day.
So you would think the opportunity to give primary school pupils from P1 to P3 a free school meal would be welcomed with open arms by all. However, as with most great initiatives, the barrier of cost has firmly put a block on councils across the country celebrating the Scottish Government's latest school meals incentive.
The idea is that from next August, tens of thousands of extra pupils across Scotland will benefit from free school meals.
Those eligible will include the children of parents on the maximum working tax credit, resulting in an extra 44,000 pupils receiving free meals.
But it has emerged that children in the Capital could miss out on the promised free meals after education bosses admitted they would need extra cash to pay for the policy.
Edinburgh's education leader Councillor Marilyne MacLaren said herself it would be "very difficult" for the city council to implement the policy without more government money, while council leader Jenny Dawe admitted it would be "challenging".
But council leaders across Scotland have been told by their own umbrella group that they will simply need to deliver the Scottish Government's promise, in line with the concordat – an agreement signed by councils that they would provide certain services in return for extra funding.
Pat Watters, chairman of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), said complaining about not having enough funding was leading to local authorities being viewed as "a less reliable partner as a consequence".
Cllr Dawe accepted that the concordant included the implementation of free meals for P1 to P3 pupils as part of the overall funding package, despite saying it would be difficult to implement.
She said: "This is a progressive policy that will significantly improve the education, health and well-being of Edinburgh's pupils. We are exploring how best we can achieve this and have instructed the director of finance to calculate how much the policy will cost to implement.
"A detailed budget has not yet been prepared for August 2010 and this policy will be challenging to implement in a financial sense. That is why the instruction has gone to the director of finance at this early stage."
Tina Woolnough, who represents parents in Edinburgh, said: "Local authorities should start prioritising children and young people.
"A home-cooked meal is not something a lot of children get anymore and we need to give children a good nutritional meal where we can. I don't think the cost will be as high as local authorities think it will be because there's still a bit of an issue with trust with regards to what they put in school meals so I don't think there will be a 100 per cent take-up."
Recent figures show just 22 per cent of city secondary school pupils and 37.8 per cent of primary pupils take school meals. In the secondary age bracket, that is the worst in Scotland by some distance.
The city council has implemented a number of initiatives to try to make school meals more appealing. Schools now have salad bars, panini machines and smoothie makers, as well as vegetarian options.
A council spokeswoman added: "These have all proved to be very popular and it is our intention to continue to monitor trends in healthy eating. We believe that we still need to improve in this area by attracting more young people to stay in school for meals."
