Children's Nutrition Action Plan - The Food Commission

• Improve the Welfare Foods Scheme (which currently gives pregnant women receiving
means-tested benefits access to some free vitamins (A,C,D) and tokens for a pint of milk a
day).
♦ The milk tokens could be converted into more flexible food tokens. The Women,
Infants and Children (WIC) programme in the U.S. shows that comprehensive
nutritional support (via tokens for a range of nutritious foods) reduces the incidence of
low birthweight and thus saves health service expenditure – $3 health costs saved for
every dollar spent on WIC.
♦ The limited vitamins available should be expanded to a wider range of vitamins and
minerals associated with positive pregnancy outcomes.
Issues for early pregnancy and pre-pregnancy nutrition
This is a problematic period for intervention because an estimated 40% of pregnancies are
unplanned, and a woman does not know she is pregnant in the earliest weeks. Intervention
that starts only from confirmation of pregnancy will therefore miss a critical period for the
developing child. The Acheson Report of the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health
(1998) acknowledges the need to adopt an intergenerational approach to tackling the cycle of
poverty and poor nutrition, and to invest in the health and nutrition of girls and young women
since they will be the mothers of the future. The school years are a key opportunity to
improve the health of young women.
Recommendations for future work:
• Benefit levels should be set at a level to reflect a theoretical pregnancy, using one of the
minimum income standards models to ensure that all out-of-work families have access to
an adequate diet.
• Improve disadvantaged women’s access to good quality, affordable fresh food by
supporting community food projects.
• Improve quality of food by imposing a legal obligation to replace nutrients lost in the
processing of food (e.g. white flour).
• Make comprehensive health information available to all women planning pregnancy.
• Make welfare foods available on request to out-of-work women planning pregnancy.
• Improve nutritional standards of school meals. Stronger guidelines are needed
specifying serving sizes and nutrient content, perhaps on the U.S. model where meals
must be consistent with the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for specific
nutrients.
• Ensure universal access to school meals. Address the problem of nutritionally
inadequate packed lunches brought in from home. Research whether parents find schoolprepared
food unsatisfactory or too expensive and what would encourage higher take up.
• Improve school teaching of nutrition and cooking skills.
• Take action to reduce eating disorders.
The Maternity Alliance, 45 Beech Street, 5 th Floor, London EC2P 2LX.
The Children’s Nutrition Action Plan, published by The Food Commission
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