Last month, Essex became the first authority to pull out of providing school meals, citing the need to cut costs to avoid council tax hikes.
Now councils are being warned that children's nutrition could suffer if more of them follow Essex's example and delegate all responsibility for meals to individual schools.
Jeanette Orrey, catering manager at St Peter's Primary School in East Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, has been pioneering better school meals but fears many schools already facing financial pressures will not consider nutrition a priority.
"Essex is the first to say it is not running a school meal provision but it might not be the last," she says. "A number of schools have asked me what they can do."
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