With one in 10 children now living with obesity globally, the WHO is calling on governments to overhaul school food and create healthier eating environments.
Healthy food in schools could shape children's diets for life, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, as it released new global guidance aimed at improving what children eat during the school day.
For the first time, the United Nations health agency is calling on countries to adopt a "whole-school approach" to food, ensuring that meals, snacks, and drinks available both inside schools and across their wider environments are healthy and nutritious.
The recommendations come as countries grapple with what the WHO describes as a "double burden" of malnutrition: childhood obesity is rising worldwide, while undernutrition remains a persistent problem in many regions.
Alarmingly high obesity rates in children
In 2025, around one in 10 school-aged children and adolescents (about 188 million globally) were living with obesity, overtaking the number of children who are underweight for the first time.
Childhood obesity raises the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, and other chronic conditions in adulthood.
“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,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
“Getting nutrition right at school is critical for preventing disease later in life and creating healthier adults," he added.
The WHO said that an estimated 466 million children worldwide receive school meals, but that there is still limited data on the nutritional quality of the food they are being served.
"Childhood overweight and obesity remain alarmingly high and continue to threaten the health of current and future generations,” Kremlin Wickramasinghe, who works on nutrition, physical activity, and obesity issues at the WHO’s Europe office, said last year.
What is the WHO recommending for schools?
Under the new guideline, the WHO recommends that schools set clear standards to increase the availability and consumption of healthy foods and beverages, while limiting unhealthy options, such as foods high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats.
The agency also supports the use of so-called "nudging" interventions – such as changing how food is displayed and priced, or presented.
According to the WHO Global database on the Implementation of Food and Nutrition Action, 104 countries had policies on healthy school food as of October 2025.
But while nearly three-quarters included mandatory standards for school meals, fewer than half restricted the marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
The new guidance was developed by an international group of experts using an evidence-based process and makes up part of the WHO's wider efforts to create healthier food environments for young people.
