2024-04-26 00:03:16
The Ministry of Health’s effort to promote healthy eating in childhood and combat childhood obesity begins with the revision of the list of foods that should be available from school canteens.
The current food list dates from 2013 and was drawn up with the logic of including foods and food groups that are most often recommended in the context of a healthy diet, keeping in line with the recommendations of the Mediterranean diet. It is indicative that the confectionery category includes pasteli and wholemeal biscuits, while “school” sandwiches can include cheese, vegetables, olive paste or olives and only olive oil as a fatty substance. Today, the experts of the new National Nutrition Committee have been asked to review the contents of the list, taking into account the most recent scientific recommendations for children’s nutrition.
“This is one of the interventions that we will do in the context of promoting healthy eating at young ages”, the Professor of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Laboratory of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics of the Faculty of Medicine of the Greek Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Committee, tells “K” , Vasiliki Benetou and continues, “the school environment must be a place that will offer healthy options. To help children make healthy choices for their diet.” She also refers to the issue of control, noting that it is one thing to have a list and another to be kept by the canteens. “It is possible that an intensification of controls will be needed,” he notes.
The list of school canteens was decided to be the first issue on which the new committee will give an opinion to the Ministry of Health during its inaugural meeting yesterday, under the Deputy Minister of Health Irini Agapidakis. As the president of the committee, Professor of Hygiene and Epidemiology, EKPA, Androniki Natsa, stated after the meeting, “the committee discussed the need to establish scientifically documented criteria and specifications, in order for food not only to be safe, but also to promote health.
The members of the committee recognize on the one hand the importance of the canteen as an integral unit of the school environment and on the other hand its key contribution as a nutrition education environment for students and their families. At the same time, the members of the committee recognize the necessity of actions that will contribute to the greater acceptance of these products by the school community so that the healthy choice is the automatic choice”.
The intervention takes place at a time when obesity is now recognized as a disease and requires immediate treatment. In our country, childhood obesity rates are high and four out of ten children are estimated to be overweight or obese. According to data recently presented by the Ministry of Health, 37.5% of children between the ages of 2 and 14 are overweight and/or obese.
In the ages 0 to 5 years the percentage is 13.9% and in the ages 5 to 7 years 43%. Corresponding percentages are also recorded in a survey by the World Health Organization (COSI survey for 2018-2020 which includes 33 countries) according to which in Greece 42.1% of children aged 7 and 44.7% of children aged 9 were overweight or obese.
Source kathimerini.gr