Recognizing that malnutrition is one of the major health problems plaguing our school children, the Department of Education (DepEd) through the Health and Nutrition Center (HNC), has intensified efforts to strengthen the School-Based Alay Tanim Program (SBATP).

Last year’s statistics from the HNC Annual Report show that 17 percent of school children are undernourished and poor academic performance, absenteeism, and high drop-out rate can be traced to poor nutrition.

The DepEd initiative aims to establish school gardens, school nurseries, and vegetable production centers to provide ready sources of vegetables to complement the supplementary feeding program in schools.

Last year, the DepEd, through the HNC, and in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry and the National Nutrition Council, launched the “Gulayan sa Paaralan” which tried to plant at least 50 malunggay trees in the premises of each of the estimated 7,000 participating schools nationwide.

DepEd nutritionist-dietitians developed 40 malunggay recipes to be used by school canteens and home economics teachers in menus they would serve in their supplementary feeding program.

For the coming school year 2010-2011, the SBATP is aligned with the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program of the government which aims to benefit one million poor families.

The SBATP seeks to develop positive nutritional values among the students with focus on the importance of eating vegetables and other indigenous foods.

The nutrition education component of the program will integrate nutrition concepts into the basic education curricula. Teaching nutrition concepts utilizing International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) materials and classroom health and nutrition talks by health personnel, prior to the physical examination of students, will also be undertaken.

The nutritional assessment that will be done before, during, and after the supplementary feeding program will be very useful in determining the efficacy of the initiative.

It is hoped that parents will also be supportive of the project, as it is important that the value of eating the right food, especially fruits and vegetables, be reinforced at home.