Does anyone care what their children eat in schools ?

By Kohinoor Bhowmik

It is high time our health authorities awakened to realties of nutritional challenges facing our children.

More than 70% of India's kids are undernourished, surveys show. A school-going child in India, as it is the case anywhere, spends a good lot of his/her time in schools. It's in the schools that every kid picks up his lessons.

Not only those from the textbooks but those which may shape his/her future life as well. Food habits and eating manners are of course amongst them. But unfortunately what we see today is very dismal.

If those kids from India's rural heartland relish under-nutritious `mid-day meals' served in their schools, their more urbane counterparts end up bingeing in the endless quagmire of noodles and carbonated drinks.

Schooling age is the one which demands the best nutrition for kids. Nutritional lacunae is considered behind a lot of physical as well mental distress in kids, not to mention frequent bout of illnesses, absenteeism and retarded growth.

While nutrition remains one part of the story, the hygiene -- the most crucial component of health --forms the other. In most cases, kids mess up with everything and one can imagine what sort of a surround they'll be having in schools. And it is there for everyone to see how the food-- the meal for that matter --is being cooked and served in public schools. It's nothing less than dismal in village schools. Simple practices like washing hands and eating freshly cooked food stuffs could themselves more than halve the infections that the children having today!

Though the issue has been raised time and again, no concrete action enacted till date to redress the vexing issue of the nutritional aspects of school kids. It's only a matter of laying out some simple guidelines that are required to be practiced across the schools. Some strictures on the food items served; what to eat and what not to eat at a schools; curbing the so-called ``junk food'' in class rooms etc could set the necessary momentum. If furthered with incorporating simple lessons like the need for washing hands before every meal and why should one avoid junk etc in the curriculum would have helped a long way tackling the problem.

To achieve this, no one needs such impossible legislations or amending the constitution, but simple political will. But who is having the time or will to this end?