Sweden has a long history of providing meals in schools. As early as the second half of the 19^th century meals were provided in selected parts of the country to children living in poverty. In 1945 the first proposal for a national school meal programme was drawn up. It suggested that schools should receive financial support to serve cooked food with specific nutritional composition requirements. By the end of the 1960s the government grants ceased and the responsibility, including the finance, of the school meals, was transferred to municipal management. In the 1970s most schools served a free school lunch, but it was first by the end of the 1990s that it was stated in the National Educational Act (1997) that municipalities should serve free school meals to all students in primary schools.  Since 2011, the Swedish School Law has stipulated that school lunches must be nutritious. It is recommended that Swedish nutritional recommendations are used to assess whether the meals are nutritious or not. Free hot school lunches are now provided to all students aged 7 to 16 and most students aged 16 to 19, five days a week.

In 2021, the Swedish Food Agency updated its national guidelines for school meals (in Swedish), which follow a holistic meal model including six defining qualities of school meals. The guidelines are not mandatory but are rather intended to be used as guidance and support to use a holistic perspective when planning and preparing school meals. The six quality aspects are: 1) tasty, 2) safe, 3) nutritious, 4) eco-smart, 5) pleasant and 6) integrated as part of educational activity. The meal model is used as support by policy-makers, decision-makers, and meal planners to develop meals from a more comprehensive perspective.

The management of the school meals programme is fully decentralized so the municipalities are the decision-makers in terms of providing food to schoolchildren (e.g., whether meals are prepared on-site or delivered by external food service providers) and funding comes from local taxes, not central government. The role of the Swedish Food Agency is to support the development of meals in the public sector, including school meals by e.g. issuing guidelines and performing national surveys.  Swedish school meals have received a boost over the past decade with many municipal efforts in bringing food quality and chef skills into school kitchens.

The main characteristics of these guidelines are summarized below:

Development process of the national guidelines for school meals

The national guidelines for school meals were developed by an expert group of the Swedish Food Agency in 2015. They were reviewed in 2018-2019 and are based on the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations. Some of the documents used to inform their development are:

• Evaluation and documentation of nutritious school lunches (in Swedish)
• Management report Good nutrition in preschool (in Swedish)
• Management report Children's eating habits from a sensory and educational perspective (in Swedish)

There are plans to revise the national guidelines for school meals once the new version of the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (2023) is published.

A recent initiative, A New Recipe for School Meals aims to address school meals from a sustainability perspective. With financial support from the Swedish Innovation Agency, actors from all parts of the system including, for example, students, chefs, teachers, farmers, meal planners, and agency representatives have created action points to achieve sustainable and tasty school food. Some of the recommendations include strengthening competencies in environmentally friendly, nutritious and tasty meals, and integrating these within core pedagogical approaches.

Implementation of the national guidelines for school meals

Each municipality is responsible for the implementation of the guidelines. This decentralized model means that the municipalities (of which there are about 290) are responsible for setting specific policies or control over the school food, managing their own funds, deciding on food procurement, meal planning, training school staff, etc.

Some materials that can be used by the municipalities for training and uptake of the guidelines are:

• School food: an important part of a good school, written in collaboration with the Swedish School Board with examples of how school leaders and educators can work towards creating nutritious school meals.
• School meal tool, a free app to help staff assess meal quality and provide ideas on how to develop better meals from a holistic perspective.
• A handbook to reduce food waste in the school kitchen and while serving the food.
• a # on social media #ettnyttrecept where schools are encouraged to upload content showing efforts on making more sustainable school meals.

Within the project A new recipe for school meals, in 2021, four municipalities in Sweden were selected to come up with innovative solutions to tackle some of the identified challenges in the school food system (e.g.: schools meals as a side activity separated from the school, lack of evidence-based targets for school meals, lack of cooperation between actors in the school meal system). These initiatives are being pilot-tested with teachers, meal planners, students, local farmers and food companies. Four of the solutions are:

• Foodfluencers: Students are trained to be meal influencers to inspire their schoolmates to try new dishes and eat more sustainable and healthier food.
• Pedagogical programme: Integrating the school lunch with activities in the classroom, science centre and greenhouses.
• A school restaurant looks forward to involving the students in the design of the meal environment.
• ExploreEAT: Introduction of different kinds of sustainable food through the concept of ExplorEAT.

Monitoring and Evaluation of the national guidelines for school meals

At the school level, the Swedish school inspectorate is the institution responsible for assuring compliance with the national guidelines under the National Education Act. When problems are identified, specific orders and timeframes are given to the principal or municipality to solve them. Complementary visits can be made to ensure resolution and if the problem has not been solved, economic punishment can be taken.

Since 2018, the Swedish Food Agency has monitored school meals through national surveys in all municipalities. In the last survey from 2021, some of the aspects measured included: the percentage of schools that meet fruit and vegetable goals, the percentage of schools that use school meals as an integrated part of education, the percentage of vegetarian diets offered, the percentage of schools that offer breakfast, the percentage of food handlers that have received professional training, the percentage of schools that have set specific goals in terms of purchasing specific foods (eg.: organic foods), meal consumption by the child, professional competences of food handlers, food waste, the climate impact of food served in schools, etc. The results showed that meals are now of higher quality, meet ambitious environmental goals and have less food waste than in previous evaluations.

These surveys are scheduled every three years to report on the status of the school meal programme. The results are used for comparison between municipalities, as a decision-making basis for continued development at the national level and as a source of knowledge for the governing authorities to complement other data on publicly funded meals.

A summary of the nutritional considerations of the national guidelines are the following:

• Vegetables or fruit for every meal. Students at school should have vegetables or fruit served at every school meal, for example on a colourful and inviting salad buffet. The range should consist of at least five different components each day, of which at least three raw vegetables, at least one legume and at least one salad vegetable or fruit.
• Offer legumes. Legumes should not be served raw or half-cooked, as uncooked legumes contain lectins that can cause problems, such as stomach aches.
• More seafood: Offer fish at least once a week and oily fish every other time.
• Get help from the Keyhole! [The Swedish Food Agency's Keyhole symbol is a tool to help consumers identify healthier options when buying food].
• Switch to whole grains: Replace white flour with whole grain. Offer whole grain bread instead of white bread and vary with whole grain varieties of rice and pasta sometimes.
• Switch to healthy fats: Use dietary fats enriched with vitamin D.
• Switch to unsweetened and low-fat dairy products: Choose unsweetened and low-fat varieties enriched with vitamin D.
• Meal Drink: The choice of meal drink should be based on what is served in general and the students' eating habits, e.g., Water is a good mealtime drink. Milk can also be a good mealtime drink, but if milk or other milk products are used both for breakfast, as a snack and as a mealtime drink, it sometimes becomes an unnecessary amount.
  
  

Go to the Summary of the Standards

In Sweden, food and nutrition education is incorporated across various subjects in the school curriculum. Nutrition contents are also included in extracurricular initiatives. 

Development

In Sweden, ‘Home and Consumer Knowledge’ is the key subject covering nutrition (and health) and is taught from grades 1 to 9, with about 118 contact hours over nine years of schooling. Aspects of nutrition are also covered in natural sciences, biology, chemistry, social sciences, civic studies and geography.

Home and Consumer Knowledge has a long history in Sweden as it was first introduced in the 19^th century. The Swedish curriculum was revised for all subjects in 2011 and then again in 2022. Aspects of health, environmental and economic issues and ethical perspectives were incorporated into the Home and Consumer Knowledge syllabus in 2022, due to the need to address current sustainable development challenges. Although the subject draws on local, national and global issues, its main purpose is to equip students with skills to manage daily household life, with a focus on making healthy food choices, cooking, ensuring gender equality at the household level and handling personal finances.

Across the rest of the subjects, nutrition content is presented mainly through a knowledge-based approach, relying on classroom learning, and dissemination of messages and information materials. 

Implementation

Subject teachers are the main implementers of nutrition content within the formal curriculum. Education is decentralized in Sweden so that teachers can adapt the syllabus developed by the National Education Agency to their specific school context. In some primary schools, teachers are incentivized (with a small fee or free meal) to eat lunch with children in the school canteen to reinforce the importance of mealtimes as a learning opportunity.

There is no pre-service or in-service teacher training specific to food and nutrition education. The Centre for Epidemiology and Community Medicine, in collaboration with Sweden's Municipalities and Regions, the Public Health Agency, the Swedish Food Agency, the Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Agency for Agriculture and the Norwegian School Board, has developed a free school meal toolkit (called SkolmatSverige) that aims to support school staff (teachers, cooks, etc.) in promoting healthy eating habits among schoolchildren.

Extracurricular nutrition initiatives include ‘The Year of Outdoor Life’ (Luften är fri) a project organized in 2021 by The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Swedish Outdoor Life organization. In this project, schoolchildren were encouraged to take part in activities such as foraging and cooking in the wilderness. Gothenburg Botanical Gardens also offer outdoor learning activities for schoolchildren (e.g., growing and harvesting vegetables as part of the lived experience of sustainable food chains). Non-profit organization Generation Pep Org aims to foster better healthy habits among children through increasing physical activity and improving the quality of foods consumed and is working with pre-primary and primary schools in Sweden. 

Monitoring and Evaluation

Since food and nutrition contents are integrated transversally into different subjects, the relevant learning objectives are assessed as part of the evaluation process for each subject and are dependent on specific criteria chosen by the teachers, although there are compulsory national assessments on all subjects for grades 6-9.

The Swedish School Inspectorate conducted a quality review of teaching for Home and Consumer Knowledge in 2018, concluding that the syllabus should include gender equality, budgeting and sustainability. These topics were incorporated into the subject following the 2022 syllabus revision process.