Serving eggs to schoolchildren in midday meals will lead to discrimination between the students and given the small body frame of Indians, any extra energy provided through cholesterol by regular consumption of eggs and meat will lead to lifestyle disorders: these are some of the things described in the National Education Policy (NEP) position paper on health and well-being by an expert committee, headed by John Vijay Sagar, Professor and head, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NIMHANS.
“Serving different foods to the same graders will lead to an imbalance in the nutrient distribution among children. For example, serving other recipes or foods to the same graders, such as egg versus grams, or egg versus banana, leads to a nutritional imbalance among children. Additionally, children develop complexes that result in emotional disturbances among friends. Treating all children equally and with no discrimination is authentic Indian philosophy or dharma,” the committee says.
The committee has recommended that “ satvik food” such as groundnuts, sesame laddu/chikki with jaggery are “natural foods.” These help to overcome stunted growth and anaemia, it says.
