As a nation, our children’s health is in fact not very healthy.

Rising obesity, eating disorders, poor mental health, life-threatening illnesses and increasing outbreaks of infectious diseases, says the latest government report, paint a bleak and deteriorating picture.

Our youngest generation is also suffering worsening levels of tooth decay, anxiety and stunted growth as food prices have risen, says a survey of school nurses last year. British five-year-olds are now smaller than their European peers, suggest the studies.

While the height of German or Danish pre-schoolers may be of little concern to most of us, experts say it’s fast becoming another significant marker that highlights the dietary inequalities of children being raised under recent austerity in the UK.

In England, free school meals are given to all children between reception and year two. But from year three - or junior school - this universal provision stops and access to a hot and nutritionally balanced meal can disappear overnight.

Free school milk too is available to under fives but after that it can only be provided if parents meet the cost.

There are few medical reasons for such cut-offs, of course - it simply comes down to money.

And so as London’s mayor Sadiq Khan pledges a further £140 million to continue his free lunch programme in all primary schools for a second year, it must leave parents asking about children across the rest of England too.

The capital’s leader says when pupils have a nutritious meal each day the evidence is that all key health and education indicators go up.

Wales too has also now completed a roll-out of free school meals for all primary-aged pupils, where its government claims everything from concentration to wellbeing is seeing noticeable improvements.

If prevention is better than cure, as the saying goes, serving up free roast dinners in order to steer children away from a raft of chronic conditions in their future that will only place further demand on an already-struggling NHS suggests it could be money well spent?

Among Labour’s family-friendly proposals is free breakfast clubs for all primary schools.

But why stop at breakfast?

If it really wants to oversee the ‘healthiest generation of children ever’ the evidence suggests politicians should be serving up free lunches to all children immediately.