Child commission wants junk food ban in schools

Alerting the schools about serious health hazard, the NCPCR has recommended series of restrictions on unhealthy competitive food including a special tax on junk food, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 15, 2007, 20:33:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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For healthy children, stop sale of junk food, encourage students to take nutritious diet and promote physical activity. This is what precisely the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has asked all state governments to tell the schools.

On eve of India’s 60th Independence Day, the commission has issued guidelines on food and nutrition in schools considering rising children obesity figures, mainly in urban India. Commission says a quarter of children are eight overweight or obese. In Delhi, 24.2 per cent of school children were found obese in a survey conducted by Diabetes Foundation of India.

A National Sample Survey Organisation survey released in May 2007 had pointed at huge increase in intake of fat food products among urban Indians, including school children. The per capita fat content has increased from 34 grams in 1993-94 to 50 grams per cent in 2004-05, the report states.

Alerting the schools about serious health hazard, the NCPCR has recommended series of restrictions on unhealthy competitive food including a special tax on junk food and not signing canteen contracts with firms selling soft drinks, fast food or any other unhealthy food. A ban should be imposed on selling unhealthy food products in official school canteens, the commission has said.

The states have been asked to prepare nutrition standards for schools. The standards should reflect cultural diversity of the student body, their food preferences and special dietary needs. The district administration should set nutritional and portion size limits on all competitive food and beverages, the guidelines state.

It should be mandatory for schools to post information on the nutrition content of the food served and the district administration policies pertaining to nutrition, the guidelines state. Every school, at least the new ones, should also have full service kitchens to prepare food from fresh ingredients. Sandhya Bajaj, a commission member, said, schools should regularly monitor growth of students and take remedial steps where a deficiency is found.

The guidelines also say that healthy beverages include water, milk and juices (without added sweetener). Children and adolescents should be encouraged to eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, cereals, lean meat, fish, poultry products and yoghurt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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