Parents warned school meal sizes may get smaller due to cost of living crisis

Parents have been warned that schools may reduce the portion sizes for children's meals due to the cost of living crisis.

One of the UK's biggest food wholesaler said schools are exploring whether they can use cheaper ingredients or make portions smaller altogether. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Andrew Selley, chief executive for Bidfood, said that baked goods are currently up to 30 per cent more expensive due to rising wheat prices, which are also due to feed into pasta, eggs and chicken.

The price of sunflower oil has also “doubled against a year ago”, after Russian's invasion of Ukraine.

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“The situation is going to lead to some difficult decisions for school caterers,” he said. “Either they are going to serve smaller portions or use cheaper ingredients, which is not going to be good for children.”

It comes after the chairman of Marks & Spencer warned that food prices would increase further during the rest of the year.

“It’s very negative for consumer discretionary income but it’s perhaps not apocalyptic,” said Archie Norman, who has chaired M&S since 2017 and was previously the boss of Asda.

"It wouldn’t be surprising to see food price inflation over the course of the year running towards 8 per cent to 10 per cent. But we don’t know that yet because it runs through the year – some has run through now but there is quite a lot still to come.”

The supermarket executive and former Conservative MP said the price increase is a result of freight costs, wheat prices, oil and energy prices "knocking on to almost everything".

“As a consequence, all food retailers in the UK are, because we operate on very thin margins, going to have