Canada is one of the only member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) without a national school food program. Good nutrition impacts children’s health, wellbeing, and learning; and school food environments offer an important setting to promote health and other food system sustainability behaviours that can last a lifetime. We present an overview of national and international evidence, with a focus on promising practices that support the establishment of a national school food program in Canada. School food programs have been shown to benefit health and dietary behaviour and critical food literacy skills (learning, culture, and social norms) that support local agriculture and promote sustainable food systems. Finally, we make recommendations for key elements that should be included in a national school food program for Canada.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Hernandez, K., Engler-Stringer, R., Kirk, S., Wittman, H., McNicholl, S., (2025), "The case for a Canadian national school food program", HSSCommons: (DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v5i3.260)

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1. canada
2. children
3. school food programs

Original publication: Hernandez, Kimberley; Engler-Stringer, Rachel; Kirk, Sara; Wittman, Hannah; McNicholl, Sasha. "The case for a Canadian national school food program." Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation, vol. 5, no. 3, 2018, pp. 208-229. DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v5i3.260. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation. Copyright © the author(s). Work published in CFS/RCÉA prior to and including Vol. 8, No. 3 (2021) is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY license. Work published in Vol. 8, No. 4 (2021) and after is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/.