An existing challenge which has been severely exacerbated by this pandemic is the provision of nutritious meals to school children.
Primary school children, vulnerable children or low-income families at home are often not being fed a nutritious lunch.
School kitchen staff are classified as key workers but are not working to their full potential.
Food is often poor in nutritional content and flavour.
Children who are at school during lockdown are from a mix of busy parents or low-income families, they all need a healthy filling lunch.
Children home-schooling can be vulnerable too, eating an unhealthy diet at a time when they need nutritious meals the most.
Large companies that provide school meals are not doing a good job.
Low-income families are being furnished with lousy food parcels.
Small schools with an in-house lunch service are experiencing problems with supplies and staffing.
There is an opportunity to develop a line of food (NITA Meals) optimised for school children. By following a common menu and using centralised facilities to make key components for the meals it would be possible to construct a nutritious lunch.
Using carefully sourced ingredients we can deliver a healthy and cost-effective meal.
The school kitchen staff could produce lunches with little training and at minimal cost to the school. Families could be delivered food boxes with the same components, complete with recipes, guidelines and child friendly leaflets.
In the short-term significant benefit could be delivered simply by identifying a catalogue of suitable products which are currently available and facilitating their distribution. The ultimate goal would be to have the NITA Meals system running so smoothly that it continues to be used by schools when the pandemic is over.
Wouldn‚’t it be wonderful if from this disaster a clever new school meal service was born?
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