The ambitious plans to improve school meals were published today in a consultation paper — Improving the Health and Nutrition of Scotland’s Children.

The latest steps to help youngsters develop healthy eating habits include introducing new powers for councils to provide nutritious snacks and ensuring all food and drinks provided by schools meet tough nutritional standards.

Plans also include offering parents advice on healthy packed lunches and placing a duty on councils to promote uptake of free school meals for poorest families.

All Scottish schools will also be under a duty to become health promoting environments to make health promotion a central purpose of schooling.

Dundee City Council is already a step ahead of the announcement made today with many of the recommendations already in place in city schools.

A spokesman said, “The city council is already implementing national guidance under the ‘Hungry for Success’ initiative and will put in place any new national guidance.

“The council works hard to promote and foster healthy eating and healthy lifestyle options for pupils in all its schools.

“Free fruit for primary 1 pupils and healthy eating assistants in primaries are among the national initiatives the council has implemented.

“The transformation of secondary school dining halls into the Cafe Discovery theme has also been an important move to encourage more pupils to eat school meals. The council will do all it can in the future to implement new strategies to help improve children’s health.”

Education Minister Peter Peacock said, “Scottish school meals have been transformed.

“This is already having a positive effect on the health of our young people. But we want to go further.

“Our plans build on the success already seen and will make sure every pupil gets the nutritious food they need to succeed throughout the school day.

“By ensuring all food and drink in schools is healthy and nutritious, we are making it even easier for children to stick to the healthy options and to enjoy the long-term health benefits that come with that.”

The consultation will run until the end of July before the Bill is presented to Parliament in the autumn.