A critical review of school food provisioning using feminist lenses

School food is championed to address food-related illnesses, child food insecurity, and the environmental impacts of agri-food systems. Yet, it is often branded as unhealthy, unappetizing, and underfunded. To unpack such systemic contradictions, this critical review offers a novel conceptual framework grounded in feminist social reproduction and ethics of care, to situate school food provisioning (SFP) within a capitalist mode of production and highlight the everyday relations it comprises. The review draws on international literature and a semi-systematic approach to scope multidisciplinary research in the UK as an example of SFP in a late-stage capitalist economy. This novel methodology aims to understand school meals beyond a matter of consumption, by situating SFP within a political economy, unpacking the labor, relations, and experiences it encompasses. UK school food reforms will be situatied within wider shifts in social reproduction from the nineteenth century. Current school food programs and everyday experiences of SFP are then identified, to understand the multi-scalar and contested forms of care SFP entails. Future research opportunities are proposed to consider how SFP may help achieve equitable and sustainable systems of food provisioning.