Malakhova: meals in schools should be not only healthy, but also tasty

September 2, Minsk. Meals in schools should be not only healthy, but also tasty, Alla Malakhova, head of the Department of Hygiene for Children and Adolescents of the Republican Center for Hygiene, Epidemiology and Public Health, told reporters today, BelTA has learned.

As the manager noted, the main principle of rational nutrition for children is, first of all, adequacy. "Food should meet the caloric content, protein, fat, carbohydrates, age and physical activity. It is necessary that it be varied. Every day, the child should consume meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, milk (about 500 ml per day), including a glass of yogurt at night. Twice a week, eat sour cream and cottage cheese, and butter and vegetable oil should be in the child's diet every day, "said Alla Malakhova.

"There are some problems in nutrition. As a rule, in institutions of general secondary education - refusal to eat and the presence of food waste. These problems are interconnected. Recently, children's taste preferences have changed. Students should have a choice, and if there are dishes that children If they don’t eat, they need to be replaced.Children eat with their eyes, and everything is important here: how the hall is decorated, what kind of table setting and how the workers of the food unit look.Often the main reason for refusing food among high school students is the appearance of cooks.Most often, food waste is soup, bread and sweet drinks," the manager said.

According to Alla Malakhova, the solution to this problem can be the choice of bread that children love, reducing the number of soup days and introducing tea without sugar into the menu. However, you need to understand that school meals are only 20-25% of a child's daily needs.

“A significant role in maintaining health belongs to rational nutrition, which should be sparing in composition and method of preparation,” said Lucia Mikhalchuk, head of the catering department of the National Institute of Education of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus. “Hot meals for children and schoolchildren are organized on the basis of approximate two-week rations , which are developed taking into account accepted norms and based on the physiological needs of age and season. State supervision bodies conduct a hygienic assessment, and production control is responsible for safety and quality. "

Catering in these institutions of pre-school and general secondary education is organized by the Combine of school meals and centers for ensuring the activities of education departments of nine administrative districts of Minsk. According to Irina Chernyavskaya, Deputy Chairperson of the Education Committee of the Minsk City Executive Committee, there are currently 466 preschool institutions in the capital, where almost 98,000 children study, and 245 institutions of general secondary education, where about 220,000 students study.