Prime
Food for thought: Take health issues seriously
Pupils of Kyambogo Primary School line up for lunch in 2018.The Uganda Education Act, 2008, gives the responsibility of feeding children while at school to parents and guardians. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
The issue: Health
Our view: ...authorities should stop looking at healthy school meals as an expense and instead view them as a vital tool for tackling future health crises
A report released by the Health ministry on Monday makes clear the fact that action is urgently needed to protect children in Ugandan schools from the consequences of eating an unhealthy, low-quality diet. The report that informed a pertinent story we splashed on Tuesday should by all accounts start a conversation on the subject of cooking for children in schools.
A study undertaken by a Switzerland-based non-profit foundation, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), under the auspices of the Health ministry found that slightly over 4,000 adolescent learners aged 15 and above in 60 private and public schools are predisposed to non-communicable diseases via poorly thought-out school menus. A carefully planned repertoire of dishes in schools is supposed to have a strong emphasis on incorporating organic vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and poultry. This dietary advice is rarely if at all followed to the letter despite a number of schools having gardens that can actualise the same.
Instead porridge breakfasts as well as lunches and suppers consisting of posho and beans are pretty much the order of the day. Yet, as GAIN’s study established, the maize flour used to prepare the porridge and posho is shorn of bran. This effectively means that the porridge, posho and beans the learners consistently ingest are both vitamins and iron deficient.
We wholeheartedly agree with the authors of the report that responsible authorities should stop looking at healthy school meals as an expense and instead view them as a vital tool for tackling future health crises. As a matter of fact, given how children from under-served communities and vulnerable populations live side by side in a number of schools, mostly public, meals can also be used as a tool to reduce social inequalities.
It is a given that the goings-on in both private and public schools doting Uganda are such that dietary advice and the recommended amount of physical activity both go unheeded. As a result childhood obesity that often results in other chronic health issues such as diabetes remain a clear and present danger. We simply cannot allow this status quo to remain.
It should not be lost upon us, as appears to be the case, that failure to make investments to safeguard against chronic health issues such as obesity and diabetes means saving up costly problems for the future. An unhealthy young population now will mean a future working population unable to clock the hours required to make Uganda a productive nation.
It is refreshing to know that the government intends to be bolder when engaging a food industry that appears to be grimly intent on engendering childhood chronic health issues. Dr Daniel Kyabayinze, the director of public health at the Health ministry, disclosed plans to regulate “the marketing and promotion of unhealthy non-alcoholic beverages and sugar-sweetened beverages in the school environment” as well as putting up “restrictions on the production and use of industrially processed trans-fats.” Will the ministry be able to walk the talk this time around? We desperately hope so.
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