Labour MEP Marlene Mizzi, who has often questioned the European Commission on health, obesity, sport and other health related issues, welcomes new measures to strengthen and boost funding for an EU scheme to provide fruit, vegetables and milk products in schools. "The new school scheme is essential to promote consumption of healthy and fresh foods amongst our children and contribute to their future healthier eating habits and healthier diets" said MEP Mizzi.

The new rules, voted recently by the European Parliament, will streamline schemes which were introduced some time ago with the scope of making them more efficient. The EU will provide €250million per school year to all Member States, of which €150million will be allotted to providing   fruit and vegetables and € 100millionfor school milk.

Marlene Mizzi said: "Over 20 million children are overweight in the EU and yet the consumption of fruit, vegetables and milk is still falling across Europe. A healthy and balanced diet is the foundation of a good health, and this is why educating children about healthy-eating from an early age is of utmost importance."  

The new schemes will apply to children between six and ten years and pre-school and secondary classes will also have the option to participate. Now for the first time added sweeteners and artificial flavour enhancers will be banned from the products distributed under the school schemes and would only be allowed after being authorised by national health authorities.

"I hope that the new schemes will be more efficient and would promote healthy, fresh, unprocessed, local food and organic farming. Under-consumed, local, fresh products should have priority over processed foods when foodstuffs are distributed at schools. Therefore, I believe the scheme is   excellent news for the health of 30 million school children who will benefit from it.  Education about healthy nutrition is important in order to avoid the food related diseases and health problems arising from bad and unbalanced diets.  The scheme we voted for is an investment in the health of our children and future generations'' said MEP Mizzi.