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Recent years have seen a renewed popular interest in school meals, following criticism that they lacked adequate nutritional value. Underlying this is an apparent concern with civilising children: feeding them the right types of food will ensure they are properly shaped and disciplined, becoming competent social actors. Current discourses often suggest a picture of two distinct and competing sets of actors: one (the state) has power to impose its will and the other (children and families) are subject to this or can at best resist, in a context in which nutrition is one of the means by which civility is inculcated. In this article, we examine the involvement of multiple social actors in three aspects of the school meals system. First, we consider the rational, bureaucratic, McDonaldised process by which the state and other powerful actors seek to shape meal provisioning; second, we discuss the ways in which school meals are served and organised ‘on the ground’ by catering staff and dinner ladies; and third, we examine how children use food and the spaces provided to manage relationships. We conclude by arguing that the power relations embedded in these practices go beyond the ‘orthodoxy’ of domination and resistance: first, they are tempered by subtle practices of supplementation and amelioration, and second, there are always gaps and tensions within and between concepts and practices of civility. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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