The National School Feeding Secretariat has tasked all caterers under the School Feeding Programme in the Upper East Region to cook food for the children without adding spices.
The caterers have instead been urged to make good use of the natural ingredients like onions, garlic and ginger.
This was revealed during the practical training and sensitization of caterers under the School Feeding Programme for the central zone in the Upper East Region comprising Bolgatanga municipal, Bolgatanga East, Bongo, Talensi and Nabdam districts on food and hygiene.
The Upper East Region has a total number of 1365 school feeding caterers in 1007 schools across the region.
The caterers were taken through the nutritional value of the food cooked and served school children and the introduction of traditional foods and ingredients that will allow the children to grow healthy and brilliant in academic performance.
The Nutrition officer at the National School Feeding Secretariat who was the facilitator at the practical training, Amina highlighted the purpose of the training and its importance to the general health and future of the school children and how important it is not to add spices in the food.
“They (Caterers) are all mature, they know how to cook. We are not here to teach them how to cook. We are here to add some little bits of education to them. We don’t want them to be cooking with spices for the kids. It’s not good for their system. All we want them to do is natural produce food. Like, for example, like onions, garlic and ginger. They shouldn’t use any spices, and no Maggi, nothing. It’s just the ginger and the onions. We used to prepare the food without these spices and it is delicious”, she said.
She added “the children are still growing up and we want them to look healthy all the time. So, adding those spices will damage their system.”
Madam Amina said “we introduced new things, food they have not done before especially, Soybeans. Soybeans contain a lot of protein, and we have shown them how to do it, how to process it and they have done it perfectly. For personal hygiene, when we went for their orientation, we orientated them how personal hygiene is being done. And here too, we did the same thing with them”.
The Upper East Regional coordinator for the School Feeding Program, Fawzia Abangnamah Yakubu reiterated the need for the training of the caterers for value addition to food prepared for school children and the general hygiene before, during and after cooking in the various beneficiary schools.
“Basically, the rationale is to ensure that the dishes our caterers are giving them is healthy. Hygiene is part of the training, because if you observe, there are some foodstuff that basically, if you don’t handle it very well, or you are not hygiene conscious, you will prepare food and at the end of the day, you will transfer a disease to the child that is consuming the food”, Madam Fawzia emphasized.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Donatus Akamugri Atanga commended the National School Feeding Secretariat for initiating this training and he believes this will add more value to the cooking of food in the schools and that going forward, children will grow with high level of academic excellence due to the food and the hygienic environment they find themselves through this initiative.
The caterers were very excited to be trained and introduced to what they have grown to meet in their various localities, and they are ready to cook and serve the children with local made meals.
The caterers who are mainly women, said they are as well mothers, and the well-being of the children is their paramount responsibility which they cherish and will practice what they were taught including the personal hygiene education.
The practical training was done in all the municipal and districts in the Upper East Region with one goal of providing quality and healthy food for School Children under the school feeding program.
