Children and young people's food practices and lifestyles are perhaps more visible, under surveillance and contested than ever before. There are unprecedented levels of public and media debate concerning young people's behaviour, health, education and leisure activities, including eating out. Food issues in particular have recently gained remarkable attention by the media, Jamie Oliver's pioneering initiative on school meals, is probably the best known example. This public debate led to a number of policy initiatives to improve the quality and healthiness of meals offered in schools, especially in order to address the increase of childhood obesity and the environmental impact of food production/consumption. However, very little is known about how these policies affect children's (and their families') food habits, how they intervene in what they know, think and feel about food and where food comes from. More specifically, there are no published studies that address children's food practices and how they connect with knowledge about nonhuman animals and plants. This book, by taking a Science, Technology and Society (STS) perspective, offers a groundbreaking and comparative research-based study on how the recent 'healthy meals' policies are affecting children's practices both in the UK and in Italy. In tackling these issues the book aims at advancing the food consumption literature and school meals agenda by addressing the impact of public policies in children's food habits.

By looking at the trajectories of connections and disconnections that food - understood as a liminal object - makes with children's bodies, other animals and plants, and by examining how these connections are enacted in children's food practices, the book offers insights in the complexities of children's learning about food and in the bio-politics around school meals in the UK and in Italy.