Children who are over five years of age need better nutrition to support their activities at school and at home. — VNA/VNS Photo Bich Ngoc

HA NOI — A recent study by the Institute of Nutrition has revealed that school children suffer more from malnutrition than younger children because of poor school meals.

The study found that the malnutrition rate of children under 5 years old was 31.9 per cent, and 32.8 per cent for children over 5. The malnutrition rate of over five-year-old children was two-three times higher in HCM City where 200,000 primary school students took their meals at school.

Nguyen Thi Hop, deputy director of the institute, said that children over five typically needed better nutrition to support their activities at school and at home.

Many parents now leave their children at school from the morning to the afternoon, leaving them to have their lunch there. Unfortunately, these meals often are not sufficient, Hop said.

Hop said that most schools do not have the knowledge to feed children properly, and offer mostly fast food.

Lunch is an important part of daily nutrition; unappealing menus and badly cooked meals discourage many students from eating lunch.

Nguyen Thi Nga, whose son studies at Lomonoxop Secondary School in Ha Noi, said her son has complained about poor and meagre school meals. Every day, Nga packs a lunch for her son, while continuing to pay the lunch fee, as he and many other students now refuse to eat school meals. Many other students go to the canteen where they have to pay again for food.

Lomonoxop School’s manager Ngo Trong Nghia said that while some children do not like the school meals, that number is not the majority. Nghia noted that the school only takes responsibility for one of the child’s meals, while families are responsible for the majority of their child’s nutrition.

Hai Yen, who sends her six-year-old daughter to Quang Trung Primary, said her daughter also dislikes the food at school.

“My daughter has lost 1kg in a single school term because of the meals,” said Yen.

Nguyen Kieu Van, who sends her son to Nguyen Du Primacy School, does not really trust school lunches, but she has no other choice.

“I instead give more milk to him at home,” Van said.

Le Ngoc Diep, director of HCM City Primary Education Bureau, said most school deans know nothing about the meals, so it’s not easy for them to address these complaints.

Diep said that universities should train future teachers and school managers about child nutrition.

The Institute of Nutrition’s deputy director said that children, especially those going through puberty, need a special amount of food to optimise their development. Puberty is a good period for the nation’s children to develop at similar levels to others in the world, and targeting these children could help reduce the malnutrition situation in Viet Nam, where the child malnutrition rate is of the highest in the world.

According to the leading medical journal The Lancet, Viet Nam is among 20 countries in the world with the highest levels of malnutrition. The World Health Organisation said the average 15-year-old Vietnamese child is 10-14cm shorter than the organisation’s standard.

Doctor Tu Giay, an expert in nutrition, said that Japan improved their nation’s stature by giving one generation one more glass of milk a day after the Second World War. Now, the Japanese are on average 10 cm taller than the Vietnamese.

Giay emphasised that while the country is concentrating on children’s education, they are not focusing on their nutrition. The doctor said that school meals needed more attention, including guidance from a national plan and State investment. Though Viet Nam currently has some programmes to subsidise nutrition for school children in 10 provinces under the support of international organisations, it has no national programme for school nutrition.

A recent experiment in three schools in Bac Ninh Province, that provided two more milk bags per student per day, helped increase the children’s weight and height after just six months. —