Mid day meal provision in schools is essential to the health and educational development of Indian children. The meals offered through the Akshaya Patra Foundation Mid Day Meal program can help children focus on their studies and grow physically and mentally.
Though nutritious meals can be provided, there is scope for improvement to promote children’s overall development more actively through the meal scheme. Simple, small changes can significantly improve the meals to enhance the children’s growth better.
This article will explore specific health-enhancing components in Akshaya Patra’s Mid Day Meal scheme and highlight how to improve its impact on children’s health.
This scheme ensures that children have at least one nutritious food a day. The staple for most of these feeds is rice, lentils, and vegetables, which provide the bare minimum of nourishment.
However, here again, those daily rations fulfill what’s supposed to be caloric intake rather than providing the full spectrum of nutrients that the child needs. These meals lack diversity and consequently do not deliver vital nutrients such as protein, healthy fats, and essential vitamins.
With diverse food options, the program can ensure that the prepared meals become nutritionally complete and enjoyable for kids. Therefore, this meal could prevent hunger and eventually promote growth, learning, and overall well-being.
Protein is one of the richest nutrients for the growth of children, as it builds and helps repair tissues and enhances muscle building. Although lentils are already part of the Akshaya Patra mid day meal due to their protein-rich characteristics, other protein sources such as beans, dairy products, and eggs can supplement this meal further and increase the value of nutrition.
For example, the addition of chickpeas, kidney beans, or even curd really makes all the difference. Eggs, if possible, would really be a great addition, providing a simple yet potent boost of proteins. Sufficient intake of proteins from these meals helps with growth and keeps children energetic throughout the day.
What’s most important about vegetables is that they contain the vitamins and minerals children need to succeed. Still, the mid day meal scheme can be superior by employing additional kinds of vegetables.
For instance, leafy vegetables like spinach and mustard greens, or carrots, pumpkin, and peas, are sources of critical nutrients. They include vitamin A, vitamin C, and iron.
These nutrients are crucial for immunological functions, vision, and general growth. Locally grown vegetables can be easily incorporated into the program at relatively modest prices. Such diversity in vegetable intake allows the mid day meal to play a far greater role in improving children’s health.
Currently, Akshaya Patra’s Mid Day Meal contains refined grains like white rice. These provide energy, but whole grains such as brown rice, millet, or quinoa could provide better, sustained energy for children throughout the school day.
Whole grains are a rich source of fiber, which aids digestion and eventually gives out energy at a slow and constant rate. In addition, they contain more vitamins and minerals than refined grains. These nutritional boosts could make kids feel full for longer. They also improve digestion and focus. This could help students perform better in school.
Healthy fats should also be added to mid day meals. Fats play important roles in brain development, energy, and fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K absorption. Healthy fats are often missing from many mid day meals, which are usually fat-low.
Mixing nuts, seeds, and plant-based oils such as sunflower or mustard oil with food can add flavor, nutrition, and sometimes a little color. Adding small amounts to dishes, even sprinkling a few roasted seeds, or using healthier oils for cooking can give kids the healthy fats they need.
Children can easily get bored if they are served the same meal daily. Variety makes a difference in the seeming interest of a meal and ensures that children receive a broader scope of nutrients. Rotation of different grains, proteins, and vegetables adds much-needed diversity to the mid day meal scheme.
For example, on one day, a person can cook lentil curry along with brown rice, and the following day, it would be chickpea stew with millet. Those small changes make the food interesting and ensure that children get a well-balanced meal containing all these nutrients to promote wholesome growth.
Hydration is perhaps one of the least discussed but most vital aspects of child health. While most children drink just water during meals, hydrating drinks combined with nutritious ingredients can be a vast improvement. Even very simple drinks like lemon water or buttermilk provide hydration combined with a dose of necessary nutrients.
Lemon water contains vitamin C, which can fight off infections and build immunity, and buttermilk has calcium, which is beneficial in digestion. Offering these drinks with the mid day meal ensures children remain hydrated and get an added dose of nutrition.
Indian spices have been known to be medicinal for a long time. Wonderful flavors, also rich in health properties, are infused with spices such as turmeric, ginger, or cumin. Since its anti-inflammatory properties are one of the reasons, it can easily be added to any rice or curry dish.
Ginger heals the digestive system as well as boosts the immune system, so be sure to add ginger to your soups and stews. The spices are cheap and readily available, thus making it a very good choice for adding more to the midday meals without having to spend more money.
In conclusion, those health-enriching options would surely upgrade the Mid Day Meal program toward better health and development of schoolchildren. Additional protein, fresh vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and immune-boosting spices would be included in those meals for them to become nutritionally complete and well-balanced.
