Safety of food served in Mid-Day Meal program: An in-depth study in upper primary schools of Kolkata.
cross_sectional · Level IV
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31041229.
- Also identified by DOI 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_59_19 and PMC identifier 6482774.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-SA.
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Abstract
The Mid-Day Meal (MDM) program is the world's biggest supplementary school lunch program and is being implemented all over India for primary and upper primary school students. To continue a healthy program, personal hygiene of food handlers and beneficiaries should be well maintained. This study aims at examining the status of food safety measures including personal hygiene of food handlers and beneficiaries of MDM. An institution-based observational study with cross-sectional design was conducted in upper primary schools (government, government-aided school) in Kolkata over a period of 2 years from November 2016 to October 2018. A sample of 52 schools from a total of 515 schools were then selected by simple random sampling. Analyses were conducted using SPSS software (SPSS Inc., released 2007 SPSS for Windows, version 16.0). Among 52 schools, 53.8% were government-aided schools and 46.2% were government schools. There were significant differences in cleaning practice by cook-cum-helper (CCH) (χ<sup>2</sup> = 4.4, df = 1, <i>P</i> = 0.036), personal hygiene of CCH (χ<sup>2</sup> = 19.01, df = 1, <i>P</i> = 0.000) and beneficiaries (χ<sup>2</sup> = 9.3, df = 1, <i>P</i> = 0.002), practice during serving (χ<sup>2</sup> = 4.4, df = 1, <i>P</i> = 0.036), and use and storage of oils and condiments in MDM (χ<sup>2</sup> = 27.7, df = 1, <i>P</i> = 0.000) between government and government-aided schools. School authority should be concerned about maintaining proper hygiene. Adequate facilities and training program must be arranged for CCH to provide a healthy meal.