School breakfasts?

These days, everything is political. Even breakfast.

"Thousands of children are getting a healthy start in the morning thanks to [National’s taxpayer-funded] programme which is growing across schools throughout the country each week," says Paula Bennett.

The only evidence Paula cares about is votes. Because there is no other.

"We have little information about adolescents, little information about the benefits of breakfast in well-nourished kids, and little information about how variation in the composition of breakfast figures into the mix," says David Katz, director of Yale University's Griffin Prevention Research Center.

“On my best read of the literature, it's hard to make a case for that we'd get any great benefit from the programmes. Rather, we often find that they don't even increase the odds that kids eat breakfast at all,” says Eric Crampton, having studied the literature.

Politics is never about evidence, however -- and now National is serving up breakfast, every other party wants to deliver lunch.

It’s a fair metaphor for government creep, don’t you think?

Breakfast Downgraded From 'Most Important Meal of the Day' to 'Meal' – ATLANTIC

Breakfast in schools: it just doesn't work – Eric Crampton, NBR