“You cannot teach a hungry child,” said Donald Bundy, one of the world’s foremost school nutrition experts. Yet the gap between education and nutrition literacy is wider than we’d like to admit.
According to the 2025 Global Education Monitoring Report, only 60% of countries have any form of teacher training on nutrition within their national policies. And when it comes to actual implementation? That number drops even further in low-income regions. This silent gap in our education system is not just about school meals—it’s about a missing pedagogy that influences how students think, behave, and learn.
Why Teacher Training in Nutrition Matters
We often discuss nutrition as a public health issue. But nutrition is equally an educational concern—and teachers are at its frontline. Unfortunately, as the report points out, only 27% of global school meal programmes employ trained nutritionists to support meal design or delivery. In such scenarios, teachers unknowingly become the default guides on what’s “healthy”—without any professional preparation.
This is problematic on two fronts. First, without foundational training, teachers may unintentionally reinforce poor food habits or remain unequipped to link nutrition with classroom performance. Second, their lack of training undermines the full impact of initiatives like PM POSHAN (India’s flagship school meal scheme) or garden-based learning efforts.
As the GEM report underscores, “Learning about nutrition requires intentional integration of school meal delivery with nutrition education, careful assessment of nutritional intakes, and monitoring and research around shaping healthy eating habits.”
The Global Picture: Policy, But No Practice
In a policy mapping across 68 countries, nutrition education was often included in school curricula, but teacher training remained sporadic and weak. High-income countries reported only 58% coverage, and low-income countries—despite facing the brunt of malnutrition—had to depend on NGOs, development partners, or overburdened community workers to plug the gap.
Even where policies exist, operational challenges persist. For example, in India, while most rural schools under PM POSHAN serve mid-day meals, only 18% of schools reported daily on meal access due to low engagement with real-time tracking systems (Kapur et al., 2023). With such inconsistent reporting, training teachers to monitor, educate, and flag issues becomes all the more critical.
From Curriculum to Cafeteria: The Case for ‘Nutrition Pedagogy’
The report introduces a powerful idea: that food literacy must be embedded in formal, informal, and non-formal learning. This includes not only textbook-based curriculum but also experiential learning—like cooking classes, food label literacy, or classroom discussions around body image and media portrayal.
Yet, without empowered educators, these remain half-baked concepts.
Take this line from the report:
“Nutrition education has become a cornerstone of school health initiatives worldwide, designed to instil habits that endure for life.”
That longevity depends on consistent adult role models—especially teachers—who understand both the science of food and the psychology of student behaviour. It’s not just about knowing what to teach but how to teach it sensitively, especially during adolescence when issues like body image, peer pressure, and social media influence food choices deeply.
A Missed Opportunity in Pre-Service Education
In a rather concerning statistic, the report reveals that in 2022, only 14% of countries adequately covered the topic of infant and child nutrition in the pre-service curriculum for doctors, nurses, and midwives. If this is the case for healthcare professionals, it raises an important question—how many B.Ed or teacher training colleges meaningfully cover food, nutrition, and health in their pedagogy courses?
This is where reform is urgently needed. Nutrition training must be embedded into teacher education institutions, not offered as an afterthought in in-service workshops.
What Needs to Change?
The report outlines three major shifts that could address this blind spot:
Develop a structured nutrition module for pre-service teacher education.
Integrate nutrition literacy into school improvement plans and co-curricular activities.
Collaborate across departments—from health to agriculture—to support interdisciplinary teacher training.
Some countries are showing the way. Finland’s food education programme, for instance, includes school meals, nutrition classes, and teacher-led discussions on sustainability, right from primary to vocational levels. It’s time more countries, especially India, followed suit—not just in policy, but in practice.
The Bottom Line
To feed a child is to free their mind. But in schools today, we are expecting teachers to do this job without giving them the training they need. It’s akin to asking someone to teach coding without a computer.
As we march toward the goals of NEP 2020 and SDG 4, we must recognise that education and nutrition are not parallel pursuits—they are intertwined pathways. And it begins not in the cafeteria, but in the staffroom.