SAFE FOOD FOR HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

The importance of food hygiene for community development The quality of our life is very much determined by the quality of the food that we eat. Food is paramount for human health and well-being as it’s mentioned in the Universal declaration of human rights in the article 25, together with clothing, housing and health care. Notwithstanding the objectives and rhetorical statements periodically put forth by  governments and international organizations, the current trends related to hunger and malnutrition are dire, with an estimated 821 million undernourished people in 2017 (compared to 784 million in 2015) one third of which live in South Asia. Children are  especially vulnerable to malnutrition as this hampers their full development and their ability to learn and lead a healthy and fulfilling life. 

Currently an estimated 149 million children are stunted worldwide with India having one of the world’s highest children under nutrition rates.  According to the UN 4 out of 10 children in India are not meeting their full human potential because of chronic under nutrition or stunting, leading to diminished learning capacities, poor school performance and increased risks of chronic diseases. As it’s shown by  researches promoted by the WHO, unsafe food creates a vicious circle of disease and malnutrition particularly among the most vulnerable individuals such as children. 

For these reasons the Indian Government decided to launch the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education in 1995, also known as Mid-Day Meal Scheme its stated goals being: enhancing enrollment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improving nutritional levels among children. Unfortunately some surveys and researches showed the gap between the stated goals of the programme and its actual implementation, the shortcomings being: lack of proper infrastructure for the processing, handling and provision of food; the poor nutritional value of the food provided; the lack of implementation in certain areas at all; lack of funds for the implementation of the programme and, as a result, the failure to meet the predetermined goals. Food hygiene is therefore a paramount issue to be addressed in order to prevent food borne diseases and malnutrition, and this has to be tackled both on the educational side (providing knowledge about the measures to take in order to have safe food) and the physical side (providing access to the necessary tools and infrastructure necessary to have safe food). The WHO defines food hygiene as the conditions and measures necessary to ensure the safety of food from production to consumption and identified five key areas related to the implementation of 

The measures necessary to guarantee food hygiene. These issues needs to be addressed  mainly in the rural areas where there’s a lack of awareness and infrastructure about the measures to take in order to prevent food borne diseases and where communities are most vulnerable to problems such as lack of access to services. FAO recognizes that schools are an ideal setting to support nutrition and development as children are at an age where food and health habits are being formed, and they can also influence families and be a channel for wider community participation, therefore creating benefits that extend beyond the classroom to households and communities. Given the shortcomings proved by the governmental program about school meals, the role of NGOs such as HEEALS are fundamental in order to tackle the aforementioned issues, providing educational and physical tools, and promoting development and health through a direct dialogue with the communities themselves. Only through a direct dialogue the empowerment of such communities can be obtained, by listening to the voices of the people on a grassroots level and giving them the freedom to choose. As shown by Amartya Sen freedom is both a mean and an end to development and is necessary to avoid the vicious circle of poverty.

-        - Andrea

Source 

www.un.org › universal-declaration-human-rights 1 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/ 2 ibid. 3 https://in.one.un.org/un-priority-areas-in-india/nutrition-and-food-security/ 4 https://www.who.int/health-topics/food-safety/ 5https://mhrd.gov.in/mid-day-meal 6https://scroll.in/latest/935227/;https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2019/09/07/UP-govt-was-aware-7ofsevere-shortcomings-of-mid-day-meal-scheme.html;https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ over-900-children-reported-ill-in-last-three-years-after-consuming-mid-day-meals-hrd-ministry- 5828876/;https://indianexpress.com/article/india/priyanka-gandhi-uttar-pradesh-governmentschool-mid-day-meal-6161112/;https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/health/mid-day-mealhas-failed-to-attract-children-to-government-schools-says-cag-audit-52267

https://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/food-hygiene/5keys/en/ 8http://www.fao.org/school-food/overview/en/ 9A. Sen, “Development as freedom”, 1999 10