With getting children to make healthy food choices becoming increasingly challenging, Health Minister Dr Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu says Fiji’s new Home-Grown School Meals Policy Brief will help ensure children have better access to nutritious, locally grown food.
Speaking at the launch, Dr Lalabalavu says the onus is on parents and communities to create an environment that enables children to make healthy choices.
He says good nutrition during childhood lays the foundation for healthy growth, learning and development.
Dr Lalabalavu says he grew up at a time when his parents forced him to eat healthy foods, however, in this day and age, getting children to eat healthy foods has become a challenge.
He says parents and communities need to show children that eating healthy foods will help build a healthy future.
He adds the responsibility cannot be limited to telling children to eat healthy food, as an environment must be created where nutrition is affordable and readily available.
The Health Minister says children spend a significant part of their day at school, and schools therefore have an important role in shaping lifelong eating habits.
He says the Home-Grown School Meals approach presents an important opportunity by connecting schools more closely with local farmers and communities; this can improve children’s diets, encourage appreciation of local foods and support farmers in their food supply chain.
Dr Lalabalavu says Fiji has not started from zero, with schools and communities already supporting school gardening, nutrition education and meal programmes.
He says teachers, health workers, parents, farmers and community groups are all contributing to the well-being of children.
He says the task is to build on what is already happening and develop a more coordinated and sustainable approach.
The Minister says no single model will suit every school, as the realities of schools in urban, rural and metropolitan communities differ.
He says Fiji’s national approach must be flexible enough to respond to these circumstances.
He says achieving this goal will require active collaboration amongst the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Agriculture and Waterways, together with parents, teachers, farmers, children’s societies, the private sector and development partners.
He says the policy brief provides a strong foundation for this work, but its true value will be determined by the practical and sustained action that follows.
Dr Lalabalavu says Fiji must keep the child at the centre of every decision.
He says providing children with regular access to nutritious, locally grown food means investing not only in their future, but also the future health and resilience of the nation.
He adds that the Home-Grown School Meals Policy would also be a major assistance in Fiji’s fight against non-communicable diseases now and into the future.
Reflecting on his own school days, Dr Lalabalavu says he attended Draiba Fijian School as a primary school student, where the school had its own school gardening programme.
He says students used to harvest root crops and other nutritious foods from their root gardens and make them into school meals that were sold in school.
He says Fiji is not reinventing something, but is strengthening or bringing back what it used to have before.
Meanwhile, Consumer Council of Fiji CEO Seema Shandil says today’s dialogue is all about putting children first and building healthier food environments through homegrown school meals.
Shandil says it is a very important dialogue because, at heart it is about children, the food that they eat and the environment in which they grow and learn.
She says for so many years, choices have been made that are really affecting the lifestyle and health of people, and the Consumer Council wanted to start somewhere.
She says a lot of work is going on in this space, but as far as the Consumer Council is concerned, food choices are fundamentally a consumer issue; it is about people getting access to food that is safe, of good quality, nutritious and affordable.
Shandil says what they have seen is that sometimes people end up making choices that are not healthy.
She says the Consumer Council is trying to engage schools, school heads, the Minister of Education and the Minister of Health to see how they can work together to ensure that some changes are brought about and behaviours are changed in children so that in future they can make healthy choices.
However, Shandil says children are not buying food and what they eat or consume is determined by someone else, with the question now being how children can be encouraged to make good choices.
She says this includes ensuring that some changes are brought about in school canteens and in the way school meals are prepared and given to children.
She says it is very important for everyone to discuss the issue and not only discuss but take actions in ensuring that changes are brought about in how meals are prepared and provided to children.
