Public Nutrition Policies and their Influence on School Feeding: The Spanish Experience in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This article analyses the influence that public nutrition policies had had on school feeding and their contribution to improving nutritional status and health in Spain in the twentieth century. The study demonstrates the importance of providing continuity to nutrition policies. The problem of undernutrition in the child population in Spain had been overcome by the 1970s; however, in the final decades of the twentieth century and coinciding with the abandonment of food and nutrition education policies and programmes, the current problems of overweight and obesity appeared. Despite initiatives such as the NAOS strategy (nutrition, physical activity and obesity prevention) launched by the Spanish Ministry of Health in 2005, further efforts should be made to revive and adapt nutrition policies such as those that once enabled the Spanish population to achieve an optimal nutritional balance.