Free Nutritious and Healthy Meals from Schools

By : Ratu Gita Narnina

From Indonesia
Children deprived of good nutrition, health care and education lack the future
opportunities to share fully in the social and economic life of their communities and nations,
there lies one problem in here, how can we help adolescent girls and boys encourage healthier
eating habits and physicaly activity among their peers and in their home? I want to propose an
idea for Indonesian children can get their healthier eating habits.
Recently, Indonesias Minister of Education and Culture, Muhadjir Effendy, issued a
discourse named Full Day School, where students were to stay put in school until their parents
get to pick their children up from school, and while waiting the students can fill their time with
activities that they can do in school. This discourse raises the pros and cons among the society,
and to be honest, Im disagree with his discourse, because some reasons. First, are they eating
right in schools? Here in Indonesia we need to buy food in cafeteria and street vendors but
sometimes health researcher from Ministry of Health found that the food they sell is not
nutritious and did not meet health standards, in addition some of the case the food they sell have
been found containing hazardous substances such as formalin, borax, etc. And also parents need
to spent extra money for their children to buy food while they waiting in school. Second,
students will dont have enough time to rest because here in Indonesia school starts in 7.00AM in
the morning, meaning they can spent about 12 hours in school, let alone this discourse only
targeted elementary school and junior high school students who still need enough rest rest for
their own growth and development.
Should this discourse take place in Indonesia I want to propose my idea where schools
must take part to encourage healthier eating habits especially for children. We can take example
like in South Korean or Japanese schools who serving an ideal and balanced meal for lunch to
students. It is also a good way to introduce the children to a good and balance meal from early
age and they wont need to but food and snacks from cafeteria or street vendors so parents wont
be worried about their children.

This idea also have weakness, first for example school tuition will become more
expensive, the second this idea I think can only be applied to schools in big cities in Indonesia
such as the capital city, because there a lot of schools who located in village or rural areas in
Indonesia who are still not have adequate facilities even until we cant call a place like that a
school because of of that. Thats why I need the support of Indonesias Minister of Education and
Culture, from local government (because Indonesia applying autonomous administration
system), and also from Indonesia current president Joko Widodo to allocate education funding to
help facilitating and improving schools especially in Indonesias rural areas. And also help from
Ministry of Health to supervised the food quality which will be provided by schools when this
idea materialized in the future.
There is another problem lies in apllying this idea, I already told my idea is will likely
only happen mainly in big cities, not only because the schools facilitation in big cities are better
that schools in rural areas, but also the distribution of foodstuff goods/daily goods and the
velocity of money somewhat hampered to reach the rural areas in Indonesia rather than in the big
cities, so it can be said that poverty rate in Indonesia is still high, this resulting foodstuff and
goods prices getting more and more expensive by the day and people who live in poverty cant
even afford to buy their daily meal, so lots of Indonesian citizen especially families who live in
poverty still lacking to get food and causing their children affected by malnutrition. This
expensive food prices not only felt by the people living in rural areas but also slowly felt by the
people living in the big cities and if this situations continues it threatening lots of Indonesian
children will affected by malnutrition.
That is why, i want the Mister President and Minister of Economy to help in eradicating
poverty and suppressing foodstuff/daily needs prices from getting more and more expensive.
This is why they need to make sure that the velocity of money and food distribution is spread
evenly throughout Indonesia. Government also need to help in eradicating the middlemen (or we
used to call as tengkulak), the people who bought goods from fishermen and farmers with a
low price and sell that goods again with fairly high prices in the market and also the corruptor
who took the funding for economy and education aid away for their personal gain. And also help
from Ministry of Health the possibility of reducing the number of children affected by
malnutrition, one my suggestion that came in my mind is urges, especially the poor people to not

have many children or the programme we called as Keluarga Berencana, where people who
lives in poverty suggested only to have one child only, if this programme applied well, it will
greatly reduce the number of children who are likely to be affect by malnutrition.
So in conclusion the government should help to suppress the foodstuff prices in
Indonesia, and make sure that the distribution is done evenly throughout Indonesia especially to
rural areas, this will greatly help poverty families to afford food for their children and will
greatly reduce numbers of children affected by malnutrition in Indonesia. After that we can
applied the idea of schools which provided healthy lunch in order to introduce children from
early ages about healthier eating habits.