Written for the Good Food Movement as part of my monthly column ‘The Plate and the Planet’. Published in October 2025. Header image credit: Alia Sinha for the Good Food Movement.

A few months ago, I delivered a guest lecture on policies addressing the human right to food. During the question-and-answer session that followed, a student asked me which policy intervention I thought was the most effective—a deceptively simple question. After offering the usual caveats about there being no silver bullet for ending hunger, I said that my vote would go to free school meals (often referred to as universal school meals).

School meals reach children at a critical stage of life, when nutrition most directly shapes physical growth, cognitive development, and long-term wellbeing. But the ripple effects extend far beyond the wellbeing of individual children. Free school meals can benefit society as a whole by raising attendance rates and allowing children to stay in school longer; they can ease the burden on households struggling with food costs and cooking; and they can even support local farmers and help maintain biodiversity. In this column, I hope to continue the discussion that started in the classroom and highlight the multi-fold benefits of providing nutritionally balanced, context-sensitive meals to school-going children.

India’s Mid Day Meal scheme 

India’s Mid Day Meal Scheme, launched in 1995 and now operating under the PM POSHAN banner, is the world’s largest school feeding programme and provides one free meal a day to over 11 crore children in over 11 lakh government-aided schools and education centres. Its goals are ambitious: improve enrollment and attendance, tackle classroom hunger, enhance nutritional outcomes, and support equity. The scheme’s guidelines stipulate nutritional standards of 450 calories and 12 grams of protein for primary school children, and 700 calories and 20 grams of protein for upper-primary students. Costs are divided between the central and state governments. The centre supplies food grains such as wheat or rice, while the states pay for the other expenses required for a full meal and decide the menus for schools. 

Studies have shown gains in school enrollment, especially among girls and children from marginalised communities as well as modest improvements in height, weight, and learning outcomes over time. Since 2013, the midday meal has been a legal right for school-going children, but the contents of that meal are not sufficiently secured by law and remain subject to the discretion of state governments.