'Healthy food for all" is the noble sentiment uniting Canada's school food advocates, but the country is nowhere near a cohesive vision for national student nutrition.

Entrepreneurial programs designed to put healthy food in schools are cropping up across the country like never before, connecting farmers to school salad bars in British Columbia, putting culinary students in charge of alternative cafeterias in Ontario and improving grades in high-risk neighbourhoods.

Despite these initiatives and studies that link school food to increased success in the classroom, Canada is unlikely to shed its title as the only G8 country without a national meal program. The federal government says it has no plans to take on school food.

Students who line up for lunch at the 50 or so salad bars that have cropped up in British Columbia school cafeterias are in the midst of a big undertaking.
As they load up on local greens, root vegetables, eggs and cheese, these youngsters are fortifying themselves and the province's local food system; they are also sketching the blueprint for a unique program with national aspirations and the potential to recalibrate how the leaders of tomorrow view food.

After theshooting death of a student, school officials looked for new ways to reduce aggression and focus young minds on learning. The solution underlies the link between nutrition and academic successWhen a teen was shot to death in the halls of a Toronto high school in 2007, it sparked a hunger among educators in the troubled neighbourhood for new ways to stem violence and offer a better future to their students.
Instead of putting in metal detectors in the area's schools, they came up with a unique, softer approach to reducing aggression and improving concentration in the classroom: food.
"The administrators wanted a nutrition program - they wanted to make sure every kid was fed," saidMena Paternostro, co-ordinator of student nutrition with the Toronto District School Board. "They came out loud and clear and told us a hungry kid was an angry kid."

Inside a handful of innovative schools across the country, students sit down to made-from-scratch lunches: whole wheat bread with rosemary, eggplant parmesan, burritos with local beans, sautéed kale with garlic and chilies.
At most of the country's schools, though, the brown bag still reigns. Canada is globally unique in its relaxed approach to school food. It is the only G8 country with full day classes and no national school meals program, the often fraught system that nonetheless ensures grade school children from the United States to Japan have access to some form of sustenance - either free or at subsidized prices - during each day of study.
Advocates here are still trying to make the case for why students ought to be fed anything at all.