Children learn about food long before anyone teaches them what carbohydrates or vitamins are. They learn through routines, habits and observation. They watch what adults buy, cook and eat. They absorb lessons from their home lives: whether breakfast happens; whether vegetables and sugary drinks are occasional or everyday. Families shape children’s relationship with food in ways that schools alone never can. 

Countries everywhere are struggling with the fact that children are surrounded by advertising and food environments pushing heavily processed and unhealthy products. Obesity and diet-related diseases are increasing quickly among children and adults alike. 

At the opposite end, hunger and undernutrition remain widespread. Food insecurity has worsened because of conflict, climate shocks and rising living costs.  

The GEM Report publication, Education and nutrition: Learn to eat well, shows that the connection between nutrition and education runs is strong and runs in both directions. Hunger and bad nutrition affect concentration, attendance and learning. Education shapes the decisions people make about food, health and care throughout their lives. 

Parents, especially mothers and caregivers, appear again and again throughout the evidence. 

Having the opportunity to go to school gives mothers knowledge about child nutrition

Across 56 countries, children whose mothers had at least secondary education were more likely to have better nutritional outcomes than children whose mothers had no education. In Bangladesh, analysis across multiple demographic surveys found that malnutrition rates consistently declined as maternal education levels increased. In Indonesia, mothers with primary education or less were significantly more likely to have stunted children under the age of two than mothers with a college education. In Nigeria, children born to mothers with no education were far more likely to experience stunting than those whose mothers had at least secondary schooling. 

Given the role of parents, schools cannot approach nutrition as a stand-alone technical issue

Around the world, hundreds of millions of children receive meals through schools each day. Research consistently shows improvements in attendance, concentration and learning, particularly for disadvantaged children. But food provision alone rarely changes behaviour in lasting ways. The most effective school feeding programmes involve parents directly.  

A review of nutrition interventions among young people found that programmes worked better when schools collaborated with parents and families and when healthier school food environments were reinforced at home. Another review found that children’s consumption of sugary drinks and unhealthy snacks was more likely to fall when adults modelled healthier eating behaviours themselves. 

Chile offers a good example of how programmes became stronger once parents were included. An early nursery school initiative aimed at reducing childhood obesity by lowering the energy content of school meals had limited success. The programme became more effective after expanding to involve parents and address eating habits both at school and at home. Fruit and vegetable intake improved while unhealthy snack and fat consumption fell. 

Including community members as well as parents in the task helps even more. In Malawi, community-based nutrition education programmes for caregivers helped improve children’s dietary diversity even in areas affected by food insecurity. In Nepal, a home-grown school feeding programme succeeded partly because of strong community ownership. Parents, teachers, cooks and local stakeholders were all involved in supporting the programme and improving meal quality. 

Families operate in food systems that make healthy choices harder than they should be

In many places, highly processed foods are cheaper, more accessible and more aggressively marketed than healthier alternatives. Parents are balancing time pressures, rising food costs and constant exposure to advertising aimed directly at children. Public opinion surveys routinely note that adults would prefer a ban on unhealthy food marketing to children to reduce exposure to unhealthy food. Nearly 8 in 10 adults in the United Kingdom say that such ads aimed at children should be banned, for instance. 

This can mean that public campaigns around healthy eating often struggle because they focus too heavily on individual behaviour while ignoring the wider environment people live in. Telling families to “eat healthier” does little if nutritious food is unaffordable or unavailable. 

Schools can create healthier food environments, expose children to nutritious foods they may not encounter elsewhere and provide practical learning around cooking, sustainability and well-being. They can also strengthen trust between schools and families. 

Some countries have built this into education more systematically. In Japan, the Shokuiku approach integrates food education into school life while emphasizing culture, sustainability and shared responsibility around eating. Finland treats school meals as part of the broader educational experience, connected to health, participation and social development. 

Parents Day is a reminder that education does not begin and end at the school gate. Families remain children’s first teachers in ways that are both ordinary and profound. Habits around food, care and health are built gradually through everyday interactions over many years. 

The evidence from nutrition programmes around the world keeps returning to the same conclusion: children do better when schools, families and communities connect.