As our charity, The One Box runs during the school term, the program is back for the start of the new 2022 school year, delivering thousands of fresh food relief boxes each week to families in need across Australia.
With children consuming 30% of their daily food intake at school, what they eat during the day plays a crucial role in their learning and development. This is why Nutrition Australia has recently launched Healthy Lunchbox Week (6 to 12 February) with resources to help families build healthy lunchboxes.
Many recipient families report that The One Box empowers them to prepare balanced and nutritious lunchboxes to help their children thrive at school.
“It means the kids have fruit in their lunchboxes, which they wouldn’t always be getting. So, that’s made a huge difference. I’m just so glad that it [The One Box] is fresh food, because you don’t realise how much better it is until you’ve had it.”
– Jill (Mum of two children in VIC)
We know that a family’s physical, emotional and social wellbeing is likely to be affected if they are constantly worrying about running out of food; if the quality, variety, or quantity of their school lunches or family meals is forced to be cut down; or if families have no choice but to go without food. Every parent and child is told that they should always ‘choose healthy foods’ – but the choices you can make depend on the choices you have, and too often, we forget to ask about the choices that people have.