The pungent smell of boiling beans and burning ugali (maize meal) wafting through the corridors is one I can recall from my days growing up in a government boarding school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital.
At times, the smell would change to boiling cabbage and burning rice. This was special to us, and we had to make sure we lined up at the dining hall on time.
These were my school lunches and dinners for a couple of years: plain, bland and monotonous, day in, day out.
With time, we all learned to ‘enjoy’ our meals. We could throw in any seasoning, or banned things such as chillies, ketchup, margarine or (my favourite) mango pickle whenever we could sneak them in.
School meals have since evolved and transformed, thanks to a close collaboration among policymakers, experts, and agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP), to advocate for stronger political commitments and support national governments in developing and implementing policy and regulatory frameworks focusing on both food quality and scale in rolling out school meals.
Today, diverse, healthier meals are on school menus, including products such as grains, roots and tubers, legumes, vegetables and fruits, as well as meat and dairy – the selection of which is based on affordability and availability.
WFP has been in the forefront of this change, driving the classroom nutrition agenda to ensure every child has access to healthy, nutritious meals in school.
Source: wfp.org
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