Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school - 
So it is with great disappointment to learn that in Scotland today children still go hungry and at the same time we are tackling unprecedented rates of obesity and malnutrition.
The availability of processed and calorie laden foods continues to overload our supermarket shelves and our excessive purchasing of these products is not doing the health of our nation much good. While I urge people to start buying more local fresh seasonal produce I know this is not always affordable or indeed available. This is why the Scottish government will continue to source healthy and sustainable foods for school meals so that our youngest citizens can get the best quality nutrition to support their health and learning.
The Scottish Government will also continue to work to make sure that young people know where their food comes from, how to prepare it and what good food contributes to their minds and their bodies. And we need to educate young people on how their food habits affect their environment so that they can make informed sustainable food choices.
Free school meals work hard to tackle health inequalities for children providing healthy meals five days a week, but this is not good enough when it comes to school holiday times. I am fully behind current moves to make school meals or their equivalent available during school holidays to ensure Scotland’s children do not go hungry.
However, it is not just Scotland’s children that are affected by poor diet and hunger. With the shocking UK Government austerity cuts to benefits, increasingly low paid jobs and short hours many parents don’t have the basic resources such as pots, pans or fuel to cook a healthy meal or the skills to do so. This is why educating both young people and adults is of such great importance to tackle Scotland’s health inequalities.
At the moment poor diet in Scotland costs the NHS £5.8 billion annually, this is not sustainable and we need to do something about it.
