Students eat their mid-day meal during lunch break at a government high school. (Representational image. Photo credit: AFP file)

Bengaluru: After much hue and cry, the Karnataka government has announced that eggs, bananas or chikkis, as part of the supplementary nutrition, will be introduced in the mid-day meals of school children. The Karnataka Department of School Education and Literacy announced the initiative as part of the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN) scheme, which will be implemented across all the districts in the state for the academic year 2022-23.

Eggs, bananas or chikkis will be provided to students in classes 1-8 for 46 days a year at a daily cost of Rs 6 per student. The state and the Centre will bear the cost at a 60:40 ratio.

While a proposal was submitted to the state government to provide boiled eggs with mid-day meals for all 100 days, it was agreed that eggs would be provided for 46 days.

The government's decision has come after a recent state-commissioned report revealed that bananas were helpful as a supplement to eggs, but were not a "sufficient source of nutrition".

The pilot survey was conducted in the seven districts of the Kalyana Karnataka region by Karnataka State Rural Development and Panchayat Raj University (Gadag).

According to a report by The Times of India, the findings of the study suggested a replacement for bananas or supplementing it with some other food, which was more nutritious.

"Banana is famous for its traditional, medicinal, and nutritional uses. It is rich in carbohydrates, provides energy (about 110kcal/100g) and is one of the best sources of potassium (358 mg/100g). The fruit does not provide any protein but adds calories and minerals like potassium," the study observed.

Speaking to News9, Public health expert and researcher Dr Sylvia Karpagam said that the discussion was not "whether to replace eggs with bananas but that eggs have shown some improvement in children's nutritional indicators but bananas have not and hence the need to find an alternative to banana".

"Eggs are superior foods in terms of protein quality and vitamin and mineral content. In fact, eggs are considered a reference protein against which all other foods are measured. Other animal source foods (ASF) such as chicken, fish, and red meats come close in terms of quality," Dr Karpagam said.

For vegetarian children, the doctor suggested consumption of "an additional glass of whole milk (not skimmed), an equivalent amount of full-fat yoghurt, paneer, cheese etc. that will definitely help them to have a catch-up growth. In fact, milk and dairy have growth factors, which add height to the children".

"Fruits, vegetables, pulses, legumes, millets etc cannot offer the same nutritional value as animal source foods in terms of proteins. They may be able to provide some part of the vitamins and minerals," the doctor emphasised.

The doctor said that a balanced diet should have food from various food groups – milk, dairy, eggs, meat, poultry, fish, fruits and vegetables, millets and cereals, pulses and leagues, ghee, butter, and fat.

"The 30% of the recommended calories should come from protein, 30% from fats and oils and only the remaining 40% should come from carbohydrates so that the protein and fat sources also meet the nutritional requirements apart from calories," she added.

Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, the doctor said, reconstituted whole milk was being given to children in schools and skimmed milk in anganwadis.

"During the lockdown, most services broke down but following the court order, skimmed milk was distributed as dry rations. Now the Ksheera Bhagya scheme has not picked up completely in schools and anganwadis. It is important that whole milk is given to all children as part of the scheme as the fats provide essential nutrients for children," she added.

In the past few weeks, position papers for implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) in the state, had stirred the pot in the state.

News9 had reported about one of the position papers titled 'Health and Wellbeing', which noted that "regular consumption of egg and meat leads to lifestyle disorders".

The state's current position is contradictory to the suggestions of the NEP paper and demands by religious leaders to drop eggs from mid-day meals.

"Nutrition, healthcare and education are very crucial issues that should be decided based on science and Constitutional principles of inclusion, diversity and fraternity. Unfortunately, caste, religion, ideology, propaganda and politics have become the framework of decision making," Dr Karpagam said.

The recent position papers by the NEP, the doctor explained, were shocking in how unscientific and casteist they were.

"They will take us back in terms of our nutritional and educational and other development indicators," she added.

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