●●○ medium
There is no confirmed −; independently verified + decide the position (B). No unreachable strike-through.= non-additive meter
Eat My Lunch: Buy one, and a child also gets a school lunch. In New Zealand, about 27% of children live in poverty and one in five faces food insecurity. Yet the country was long one of the few OECD nations with no government school-lunch program, and children at low-decile schools came to school hungry, unable to concentrate, often carrying shame. Struck by a TV program showing the gap between lunches at rich and poor schools, former marketer Lisa King teamed with chef Michael Meredith to start Eat My Lunch in 2015. Buy-one-give-one (inspired by TOMS) — when an office worker buys one lunch, a healthy school lunch is given to a child in need. The lunches are made mainly by volunteers (over 18,000 cumulatively). It hit a three-year projection in 12 weeks, delivered over 1.6 million meals cumulatively to schools, and became a supplier to the government's Healthy School Lunches program launched in 2020, now making about 16,000 meals a day. The letter is B; certainty is medium. Unconfirmed concerns are placed under “Watching.” (As of 2026-Q2; estimate based on public information.)
Main narrative
In New Zealand, about 27% of children live in poverty and one in five faces food insecurity. Yet the country was long one of the few OECD nations with no government school-lunch program, and children at low-decile schools came to school hungry, unable to concentrate, often carrying shame.
Struck by a TV program showing the gap between lunches at rich and poor schools, former marketer Lisa King teamed with chef Michael Meredith to start Eat My Lunch in 2015. Buy-one-give-one (inspired by TOMS) — when an office worker buys one lunch, a healthy school lunch is given to a child in need. The lunches are made mainly by volunteers (over 18,000 cumulatively). It hit a three-year projection in 12 weeks, delivered over 1.6 million meals cumulatively to schools, and became a supplier to the government's Healthy School Lunches program launched in 2020, now making about 16,000 meals a day.
One person’s story (N1)
+ before → after
A child at a low-decile school used to come to school with no lunch. Too hungry to focus, and ashamed of having nothing to eat at midday, they sometimes skipped school. Once Eat My Lunch meals arrived — a whole-grain tuna-mayo sandwich with coleslaw, cherry tomatoes and carrots they'd never had before — fresh food filled their stomach and they could face class. Schools report that the meals reduced absences and improved children's focus and health.
Source nature: Eat My Lunch / 学校 / P5 own/school report. Positive effects are not used to offset negatives.
Positive / negative effects
+ effects
- Founder Lisa King was named one of the three finalists for New Zealander of the Year 2019 and selected for MYOB Woman Entrepreneur of the Year and the Cartier Women's Initiative. It was chosen as a supplier to the government's Healthy School Lunches program launched in 2020, scaling to about 16,000 meals a day (about 3.2 million a year). Schools report that Eat My Lunch reduced absences and improved children's focus, health, and wellbeing.P2 major media/government contract / New Zealander of the Year / NZ Govt (Ka Ora, Ka Ako)
− effects (confirmed)
- No confirmed −.
- Independent verification of attendance/learning/health outcomes; dependence on buy-one-give-one / government contracts and sustainability; quality of provision
A second look
The number of meals delivered (over 1.6 million cumulatively) is solid, but effects on attendance, health, and learning come mainly from company surveys and schools' voices, with limited third-party quantitative evaluation. The buy-one-give-one model raises general points about donation-dependent sustainability and whether it creates dependency, and its value core is “providing meals,” not a structural solution to poverty itself.
Sources
How to read this assessment
- Reachable upper bound (ceiling): a confirmed − sets the ceiling, and independently verified + decide the position within it. + do not cancel out −.
- The weight of evidence is not symmetric: only confirmed − are counted; the volume of disputes or allegations goes under “Watching.” + are counted from independent evidence, while an organization’s own PR is treated as “reference.”
- Size is not value: scale is not used in the assessment. Matters that stay within money or competition—investors, shareholders, sanctions, trade secrets—are also excluded.
- The letter (assessment) and certainty (how reliable the information is) are separate axes.
This is a translation; the Japanese version is authoritative. The assessments here are generated automatically by AI based on published criteria. The operator does not alter individual results. Because they are AI-generated they may contain errors, and they are opinion and commentary, not statements of fact. Where evidence is insufficient, the entry is marked “On hold.” Requests for correction are accepted via the form.
Terms: Narrative Value = an assessment (A–G) of the distance between the story an organization tells and its reality / Ceiling meter = a visualization of the reachable upper bound / Watching = unconfirmed matters not counted / Protected stakeholders = people, animals, nature, and future generations. | Generated by: AI | As of: 2026-Q2 | Back to top