New Delhi : While recommending an improved quality of midday meals served to school children across the country, an expert panel has stressed that good taste is as important as the nutritional content.
Its recommendations have come at a time when the Rajasthan government is pressurising the HRD Ministry to allow it to introduce better quality pre-packaged food as part of the midday meal scheme implemented for primary and upper primary classes across the government schools.
The ministry is reluctant to tweak the scheme that mandates only “not cooked meals.” The panel, headed by Dr Vinod K Paul, Padediatrics, Head of Department in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), has recommended to the HRD Ministry an improvement over the 2010 guidelines drawn up by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to include milk and milk products like curd or paneer, eggs and bananas as desirable additions to improve nutrition.
It has also recommended increase in financial allotment for the purpose.
It has tried to set right inadequacies in the food by recommending better protein quality, less carbohydrates and slightly more fat content, putting a stamp of approval on some standard recipes provided by experts from the National Institute of Nutrition.The panel has suggested Chhole-puri, rajma-rice, dalia, khichri, chhole-rice for North India while tamarind rice, lemon rice and sambar rice for South India, potato-pulao or dal-rice in Northeast, and vegetable pulao across the country.
“For essential ingredients other than cereals (wheat/rice), the unit cost for a primary school child comes to Rs 5.95 and upper primary school Rs 8.88.
This does not include the desirable milk, milk products, egg or banana items as proposed,” the panel said, suggesting a mechanism to review the cost every two years.
