Mini Kitchen Lands in Schools
Also initiated to improve feeding for indigent children, a few pupils between the ages of six and nine were drawn from Sangotedo Primary School and Eputu Community School to witness the pilot mini kitchen.
Organised as a cooking competition, the pupils were taught the benefits of healthy feeding while they were also given the opportunity to design their menu. Surprisingly, children from affluent homes included African dishes such as ‘Eba’ and ‘Semovita’ in their breakfast menu, perhaps a strong indicator of the lack of knowledge in healthy feeding.
Tagged Project Healthy Kids (PHK), the initiative is the school project arm of PHKI that addresses childhood undernourishment and obesity prevention. Overweight children are usually identified with affluent backgrounds while the underweight ones are poorly fed. Sadly too, most indigent children do not eat breakfast.
Speaking at the inauguration event, the Founder, PHKI, Mrs. Edirin Metseagharun, observed that overweight children grow to become overweight adults who are at risk of serious, yet, preventable obesity-related ailments such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
“Our over-riding objective is for children to eat right, move more and live longer to learn better. In order to achieve this objective, it is our plan this year to reach out to 200 primary and secondary schools in Lagos,” she revealed.
She also added that when children eat right, their mental ability is developed. Her concern is not just on children but on mothers who often decide what the family eats.
“We have been able to reach over 1,500 children with the awareness campaign. To be honest, it was not easy to convince children to eat right. My son loved ice cream. It was hard to stop him because he was becoming overweight. I had to start rewarding him to encourage him to take fruits instead of ice cream. He likes fruits now,” she said.
For the children, she recommended healthy snacks such as crackers, unripe plantain chips, tiger nuts, walnuts, groundnuts. Several cartons of Beloxxi biscuits were shared amongst the select children at the mini kitchen event.
The programme has been approved by the Lagos State Ministry of Education and endorsed by Nigeria Heart Foundation (NHF).
The Proprietress, Soaring Kids School, Mrs. Olapeju Ajekigbe remarked that the essence of the mini kitchen initiative is for the children to take the knowledge back to the school at large and even to other children elsewhere.
“The last time we held a PTA meeting, we talked about food and the meals children bring to school. We could have made a roster for the children but we know that all fingers are not equal. The organisers just told us that pap is very healthy and I think every parent can afford pap,” she said.
In addition to healthy feeding, children were also encouraged to engage in simple physical exercises to stay healthy.
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