Healthy food in schools can help children develop healthy dietary habits for life, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which released a new global guideline on evidence-based policies and interventions to create healthy school food environments. For the first time, WHO is advising countries to adopt a whole-school approach that ensures food and beverages provided in schools and available throughout the broader school food environments are healthy and nutritious.
Childhood overweight and obesity are rising globally, while undernutrition remains a persistent challenge. Schools are on the front line of this double burden of malnutrition. In 2025, about 1 in 10 school-aged children and adolescents – 188 million – were living with obesity worldwide, surpassing for the first time the number of children who are underweight.
“The food children eat at school, and the environments that shape what they eat, can have a profound impact on their learning, and lifelong consequences for their health and well-being,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Getting nutrition right at school is critical for preventing disease later in life and creating healthier adults.”
Healthy dietary practices begin early in life. Children spend a significant portion of their day in school, making it a critical setting for shaping lifelong dietary habits and reducing health and nutrition inequities.
Today, an estimated 466 million children receive school meals globally, yet there remains limited information available about the nutritional quality of the food they are served.
In the guideline, WHO recommends that schools improve food provision at schools to promote greater consumption of foods and beverages that support a healthy diet. Specifically:
- Setting standards or rules to increase the availability, purchase and consumption of healthy foods and beverages, while limiting unhealthy foods (strong recommendation);
- Implementing nudging interventions to encourage children select, purchase and consume healthier foods and beverages (conditional recommendation). Nudging interventions can include a change to the placement, presentation or price of food options available to children.
Policies alone are not enough, and monitoring and enforcement mechanisms are essential to ensure that guidelines are implemented effectively and consistently in schools. According to the WHO Global database on the Implementation of Food and Nutrition Action (GIFNA), as of October 2025, 104 Member States had policies on healthy school food, with almost three quarters including mandatory criteria to guide the composition of school food. However, only 48 countries had policies that restrict the marketing of foods high in sugar, salt or unhealthy fats.
WHO convened a diverse, multidisciplinary group of international experts to develop this guideline through a rigorous, transparent, and evidence-based process. This work forms a cornerstone of WHO’s broader mission to create healthy food environments, and is implemented as part of global initiatives such as WHO acceleration plan to stop obesity and the nutrition-friendly schools initiative.
The guideline is designed to support action at both local and national levels, recognizing that subnational and city authorities play a key role in advancing and implementing school food initiatives.
WHO will support Member States to adapt and implement the guideline through technical assistance, knowledge-sharing and collaborations. To mark the launch, WHO is hosting a global webinar on 27 January 2026 (13:00–14:00 CET).
