Mandating Nuntrional Food in School Canteens

Often times it has become a regular practice for school children to take their daily meals in school canteens. It is a common knowledge that for young food consumers, what appear most saleable are the common junks like hotdogs, burgers, pizza, tacos, fries, soda drinks and the like which are easy find in canteen counters.

It is alarming to note that these type of foods consumed daily by the children during the entire school year as regular meals or snacks, does not only fail to provide them with proper nutrients needed by growing children. Worst, it has been the primal source of diet related diseases like obesity, cancer, coronary heart disease and diabetes to name a few. It has also been a universal norm across the globe that children coming from either the fist world or third world countries do not get enough of certain important nutrients like iron, calcium, zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Folate needed to compensate the needed energy for active mind and body.

Our law makers should come up with a legislation to address this setback. The idea is to have a policy to mandate food caterers in every school to limit the range of meal products they serve for breakfast, lunch and snack times, to food and drinks which will make a positive contribution to the nutritional needs of children by basing them on the so-called “nutrient-based meal standards” to be recommended by government accredited experts in the field of nutrition.

I believe that it’s high time for the government to undertake the much needed radical reform to advance this unfortunate situation by way of ascertaining that food supplied in school meals would be strictly limited exclusively to those fortified with the necessary vitamins and proteins for all school children while banning the ones that may be considered to be hazardous to health. Government’s vision in achieving its goal for a healthy citizenry could only be attained through proper nutrition and balance diet starting from the young age.

(This post is dedicated to my daughter who turned 9 yrs. old today)