Fairly recently, we submitted our response to the consultation on the obesity strategy. The Scottish Youth Parliament and, I think, Young Scot have done some engagement work with children and young people to inform that strategy. It will be interesting to see what the strategy says.
We know that 28 per cent of children are currently overweight or obese, which is a big issue for us. Some of our recommendations recognise the social determinants of obesity. Poverty is a huge factor in obesity, so we will not be able to do anything to tackle obesity if we do not address child poverty. We need to make the connections between the two areas, and I hope that the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 will help.
We made a number of more specific recommendations around limiting price promotions on unhealthy foods and the co-production of school meals with children and young people in order to encourage take-up. We know that there are often much more appealing options than staying in school for a school meal, particularly for secondary school-aged children. What can be done to encourage children and young people to stay in school? What are the healthy offers that they will take up? We also had recommendations on restrictions on the advertising of unhealthy foods and on clear and more consistent food labelling.
Cooking literacy is another issue. What do children and young people and their families know about food and cooking? Our food, families, futures project is about opening up schools during the holidays, with an emphasis on cooking. The project has been really positive, and we have worked in a number of local authority areas including Glasgow, Renfrewshire and Ayrshire. One of the challenges with the project has been getting access to school kitchens. Due to the contracts in local authority areas, we have needed to negotiate access. We have had to pay cleaning fees, and there have been all sorts of barriers that prevent such fantastic community resources from being used. That is a specific challenge that we have come up against.