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Opinions on conducting a comparative study of educational nutrition among various countries.

I need advice on the possibility of conducting a comparative study regarding school meal implementation at various countries and later relate it to the prevalence of malnutrition among the recipients.
Apr 13, 2012

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  • Jay Pan · Sichuan University
    Hi Zuraini. I think the data availability might be the most important for your comparative study. I'm from China, there is a experiment related to your topic, which is conducted by Stanford University. Unfortunately, I do not have the data, I think iIf you are interested in it, you could check it online and ask the author. I hope this info could help you some.
    Apr 13, 2012
  • Seshan Ramachandran ·
    Hi Zuraini. The Ministry of Health, India has been actively promoting a mid day meal program for primary school children for the last 10 to 15 years across all the states in India. The original idea was to ensure attendance in schools and bring about an increase in literacy levels. I understand some states are more successful that others because of initiative taken by the bureacrats and ministers . You may be able to get more detailed information from the Ministry of Health, Vighyan Bhawan, New Delhi
    Apr 13, 2012
  • Deleted
    Hello Zuraini.

    I agree with Jey Pen. The biggest challenge will be the access to data although they must be available. Most governments must have data in their respective departments, however they may come with all "shapes and colors". I'd check with Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) or World Bank data sources to see if you can find some unified set of data (although they may be highly aggregated).
    Apr 13, 2012
  • Zuraini Mat Issa · Universiti Teknologi MARA
    Thank you very much for the inputs. It's really valuable to me. My interest is to actually look at the policy or guidelines related to school meal that have already being implemented in various countries (i do note that some countries do not have it). In Malaysia, we do have school supplementary feeding program (similar to school meal) allocated to poor school children. Unfortunately, the outcome is not as expected. Prevalence of malnutrition is still high among these group. Perhaps, by looking at other countries way of implementing the program, we can learn something. My focus area is to look at the school cooks' nutrition and food safety KAP level as i think they would determine the quality of meal and hence would improve the intake and later, the expected outcome.
    Apr 14, 2012
  • Evangelia Mavrikaki · National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
    In Greece, we do not have school meals supplied by the school but each child carries its meal from home. We do have "shops" in each school that sell sandwiches snacks ets during the school breaks and there are certain rules regarding the products they sell. Please tell me if you are interested in more information,. Since my research field is heatlh education and especially school health education, I am interested in any collaboration.
    Apr 14, 2012
  • Maria Malliarou · Technological Educational Institute of Larissa
    I agree with Mrs Mavrikaki and I am interested in helping you if you need more data from Greece
    Apr 14, 2012
  • Olufemi Oyewole · Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital
    In Nigeria, we do not have school meal supplied by the school but approved cook do bring food to school for sale during break.
    Apr 14, 2012
  • Aoiffe McLoughlin · Perth Central and East Metro Medicare Local
    This link may help with whats going on in WA and Australia
    http://www.childhealthresearch.org.au/our-research/projects-index/n/nutrition-and-genome-health-in-children.aspx
    Apr 17, 2012
  • Miriam Silva · University of São Paulo
    Hi, It´s very nice to see all this networking! I´m not an expert in school meal, but I´d like to make a contribution, too.
    Brazil is a very big country, where we have a lot of diferent eating habits and social conditions. There are beatifull historys about how people fight to feed their children at scholl. We have a national program that works ok, but we have to fight against corruption, so we have some organized groups to check whether the law has been enforced. Everywhere there are lots of volunteers, working on cleaning, cooking... Researchs on how to enjoy all that each food can provide, for example flour made from the banana peel and so on. In 1996 the index of malnutrition in Brasil was 13.4% and has dropped to 7% in 2008. Researchers show that if we keep this pace, we will be free of malnutrition in a very short time. They say there is an explanation for the good news, which helped combat child malnutrition was the improvement of mothers´ education, the increased purchasing power, greater access to health services and improvements in sanitation, and other factors.These factors contributed to the poor people had access to food in sufficient quantity and quality.

    Some links in portuguese.

    www.cfn.org.br/eficiente/repositorio/Comunicacao/Material.../162.pdf
    www.portaltransparencia.gov.br/aprendaMais/.../curso_PNAE.pdf
    www.rebrae.com.br/
    http://portalsme.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/Projetos/sitemerenda/Default.aspx
    Apr 17, 2012
  • Zuraini Mat Issa · Universiti Teknologi MARA
    Hi Jay Pan, tq for your input. I've tried to search for study that you've mentioned. Are you referring to the REAP Project which is still progressing in China?

    Hi Eisa, tq for your input. Do you have any published or unpublished report(s) related to the mentioned study in Saudi Arabia?
    Apr 18, 2012

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