Health by Stealth, Lifting the Load, and Just Food: The influence of Ka Ora Ka Ako on the lives of whānau

<p dir="ltr">Concerns about hunger and costs of living in Aotearoa | New Zealand are not unique to New Zealand’s shores or the current time. As a response to persistent poverty and child hunger, in early 2020 the Aotearoa | New Zealand Government piloted delivery of free and healthy school lunches in 30 low-advantage primary and intermediate schools in three regions of the country. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived with significant impacts for low-income and food-insecure households. By the end of 2020, the small pilot had become Ka Ora Ka Ako, New Zealand’s first publicly funded national school lunch programme.</p><p dir="ltr">Under the korowai | cloak of constructivist grounded theory methodology, I used conversational interviews, journalling, and memo writing to answer the research question: <i>To what extent does Ka Ora Ka Ako influence the lives of whānau | families?</i> I spoke with 16 caregivers, parents, and whānau | families, who I collectively describe as Storytellers. Through thematic analysis and qualitative interpretation, I present three overarching narrative themes of Ka Ora Ka Ako 2020-2024 (Ka Ora Ka Ako): ‘Health by Stealth’; ‘Lifting the Load’; and ‘Just Food’.</p><p dir="ltr">‘Health by Stealth’ happens across the motu | islands, transforming children’s eating and experience of healthy food. A public health intervention with wide ranging impacts that is improving the health of the current generation of children in Aotearoa | New Zealand. ‘Health by Stealth’ through Ka Ora Ka Ako can generate collective, interdependent, relational health improvements and accrue intergenerational health benefits for generations to come.</p><p dir="ltr">‘Lifting the Load’ is a new theoretical lens for understanding how school food programmes redistribute labour from households to public institutions. I present the previously invisible burden of school lunch foodwork as a form of labour carried by adults engaged in foodwork in New Zealand homes, predominantly women, that has been overlooked in both education and health literature.</p><p dir="ltr">‘Just Food’ is my argument that we are collectively better off when governments and the people of Aotearoa | New Zealand share responsibility for ensuring children are food secure. I advocate for Government recognition of Ka Ora Ka Ako as an opportunity to make a long-term investment in social protection and argue that the programme be understood as a public health initiative rather than solely an educational one. With competing, sometimes contradictory, political priorities, Ka Ora Ka Ako stands up as a programme for our times, a vehicle for comparative justice for children | tamariki in Aotearoa | New Zealand.</p>