Local authorities are anticipating several challenges with the full implementation of the National School Nutrition Policy, which is scheduled to be introduced in primary and secondary schools in September.
This indication has come from Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training Hedda Phillips-Boyce, who said while she did not expect the challenges to be insurmountable, if the strategy was not carefully assessed once implemented, it could easily fail.
“We, like everything else, will have some challenges. There is always the supply and demand. For example, will the School Meals centre be able to garner the root crops that are required as opposed to giving the children the macaroni?
“We have to compare the price of the offerings – the healthier options should be more competitive than the unhealthy options,” said Phillips-Boyce.
“Students will have to learn to acquire the taste of food. If parents are accustomed to giving their children fruits and vegetables that is going to be a problem,” she added.
However, the education official said the biggest challenge the ministry was anticipating was getting vendors in and around the school environment to make changes to their offerings.
“A ‘biggie’ for the Ministry of Education would be vendors around the schools. That is a target that we are going to be looking at. We need to get buy-in from parents and there must be regular monitoring. If there is no monitoring we will fail,” she stated.
Phillips-Boyce was on Thursday making a presentation on behalf of Chief Education Officer in the ministry Joy Adamson, during a session of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) regional annual conference on non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention and control.
The conference theme was Our Food, Our Health, Our People – Accelerating healthy food policies to tackle NCDs.
Through the new National School Nutrition Policy, the Ministry of Education is aiming to improve the quality of food and beverage offerings in schools, build healthy dietary behaviours, reduce the risk of NCDs and encourage more physical activity.
Among other strategies under the new policy are to improve the nutritional value, appearance and taste of lunches offered by the School Meals Department; improve delivery of health and family life education in schools; sensitise parents to the importance of preparing nutritious meals and having schools work closely with canteen concessionaires to provide more nutritious and wholesome meals.
Phillips-Boyce said ministry officials were in the process of finding individuals to champion the cause.
“We thought initially of a health and safety committee. However, we really need to find those persons who are going to champion this cause because the process needs to be monitored,” she said. (MM)
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