School feeding programs not only nourish millions of children across Latin America and the Caribbean; they also ease household budgets and strengthen the resilience of food systems.
- School meals cut the cost of a healthy diet by more than half—new evidence shows their power to nourish children and support families.
- In Guatemala and Peru, diverse school menus cut diet costs by up to 62% while improving children’s nutrition and overall well-being.
- School meals, when well designed, boost learning, improve health, and strengthen family resilience and food systems across Latin America.
Every day, millions of children across Latin America and the Caribbean walk into school hungry. For these children school may be the only place where they receive a nutritious meal. There is ample evidence that school meals improve children’s education and health. But for millions of families, the school lunch isn’t just about nutrition, it’s a lifeline for the household budget. Yet one thing has been less clear: exactly how much these programs save families, and how they can be designed to deliver the greatest impact for children’s health, family finances, and even the planet.
The urgency is clear. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 58.1 million people (8.7%) live with severe food insecurity. At the same time, 8.6% of children under five are overweight, and the figure rises to 30.6%—or 49 million—among school-age children and adolescents, nearly double the global average in adulthood. These overlapping challenges underscore the need for solutions that improve nutrition, protect children’s health, and support family resilience.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), together with the World Food Program (WFP), recently published new evidence on how school feeding can deliver greater impact. We know these programs work. The evidence shows they can work better—improving nutrition, easing family budgets, and building resilience against future crises.
Our new publication More Than a Meal: How School Meals Can Drive Improved Nutrition and Sustainable Food Systems – Findings from Fill the Nutrient Gap Analysis in Guatemala and Peru, builds on the momentum of the 2023 State of School Feeding in Latin America and the Caribbean, also published by this partnership, which mapped the status, challenges, and opportunities for school feeding across the region.
More Than a Meal takes a deeper dive into the economics of school meals. Using the Fill the Nutrient Gap (FNG) approach in Guatemala and Peru, we combined local food prices, consumption data, and nutrition requirements to calculate the lowest-cost healthy diet and test how different school meal designs could make it more affordable, while also supporting sustainable food systems. The goal is to equip policymakers with actionable evidence to strengthen one of the region’s most important social protection and nutrition programs.
The FNG approach to modelling school-based interventions
Key findings of the Fill the Nutrient Gap Program in Guatemala and Peru
The results are striking. School meals can reduce the cost of a nutritious diet by more than half. In Guatemala, diverse menus cut costs by 62% for primary school children and 55% for secondary students. In Peru, diverse menus covered up to 35% of costs, and when fresh produce was added, savings reached 54%.
But knowing they work isn’t enough. The real question is: how do we make them work better? Our analysis points to three answers:
- Bring meals into the classroom. Serve meals in schools rather than relying on take-home rations, which tend to be less diverse and more likely to be shared among household members.
- Fortify with purpose and supplement strategically, micronutrient powders, fortified rice, or targeted iron/folic acid can close nutrient gaps at a fraction of the cost, especially for adolescent girls whose diets are both more nutrient-dense and more expensive.
- Guard against the competition from ultra-processed foods, which not only undermine nutrition but also drive up the cost of a healthy diet.
- Meeting the needs of the adolescent girl is crucial. Puberty brings rapid growth and higher nutritional needs, especially iron during menstruation. Yet healthy diets for adolescents are the most expensive for families to afford.
- Monitoring and evaluation are essential, not optional. Robust systems are needed to track progress, as well as shifts in vulnerability, and inform policy decisions timely and effectively. The FNG is a powerful tool that provides prospective analysis, which aids in shaping future decisions.
These aren’t just tweaks; they’re leverage points. They show that school meals can be more than a safety net, they can be a platform for tackling micronutrient deficiencies, promoting equity for groups with higher needs, and even reducing environmental impacts when designed with sustainability in mind.
A Path Forward with School Meals
Latin America and the Caribbean face a triple challenge: a learning crisis, with1 87.6 million people in the region experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity, and 58.1 million facing severe food insecurity, from natural disasters, and household economic strain. In this context, school meals are more than nutrition—they are one of the region’s strongest social protection tools, easing family budgets and keeping children in school.
At the IDB, in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP), we are advancing this agenda through this new research using the Fill the Nutrient Gap approach in Guatemala and Peru. To learn more about how school meals can drive better nutrition, reduce inequities, and support resilient food systems, download our publication More Than a Meal here.
