Experiencing school food policy and practice: learning from eleven-year-old girls in a working-class community in Ireland

School food policies and practices in the Western world have become central sites of intervention for responding to health inequalities and so called ‘obesity epidemics’. Given the growing interest in children’s diets and food consumption in school settings internationally, it is an opportune moment to reflect on our critical research on children’s experiences of Irish school food policy and practice. This chapter brings focus on our recent research which explored children’s experiences of school food pedagogies and school food policies in an Irish working class school community. Drawing on the perspectives of eleven-year-old girls at this school, we explore the relationship between school food norms, and children’s everyday food consumption and food desires. Findings reinforce the need to improve the structural aspects that would strengthen the opportunity to provide healthy and enjoyable eating opportunities at schools, as well as to further develop critical food pedagogies within an Irish educational context, which shall engage with children’s likes, desires, experiences and local community cultures.