Johannesburg - South Africa is food secure, but income disparities between population groups mean that most people remain undernourished – making South Africa worse off than some lower-income countries.
This was revealed by Dr Miriam Altman, research fellow at the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) and chair of the Tiger Brands Foundation, when presenting the findings of a pilot study the foundation did on its in-school breakfast feeding programme. The programme started in 2011.
Between October that year and last August, the foundation and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) did a pilot study to gauge the effect the in-school breakfast had on pupils’ nutritional status, academic performance and school attendance.
The study was conducted in six schools in Alexandra, one of the poorest regions in Joburg which is also classified as a food-insecure area, and the results were published this month.
The in-school breakfast programme, which runs in six provinces, provides an additional morning meal to the lunch provided by the Department of Basic Education’s feeding scheme, the National School Nutrition Programme.
Leila Patel, a professor at UJ’s Centre for Social Development in Africa, said they found that during the evaluation period, there was an improvement in the pupils’ health.
For many of the pupils, the meals they had at school were often the only food they’d have for the day.
Patel said children who were stunted, meaning they were too short for their age because of chronic malnutrition, and those who were obese, showed an improvement.
Obesity levels, which are linked to malnutrition, as poor families rely on cheap unhealthy foods that are high in fats, dropped by 11 percent during the evaluation period.
Patel said the biggest health improvements were among Grade R pupils. This highlighted the importance of early intervention.
She said even children who were sick would go to school to eat, then go back home.
Teachers and principals reported that the additional meal improved school attendance and motivated children to arrive on time.
Teachers said pupils were more alert in class and there were improvements in their attention span, concentration levels and class participation.
Altman said the foundation was looking to expand the programme to reach all the provinces.
She said even though the provision of government social grants had led to a decline in hunger, malnutrition levels had not improved.
“The average South African consumes three out of nine food groups,” she said. They should be consuming six.
“Improving nutritional statistics is a critical national objective.”
The 2013 Estimates of National Expenditure, which give a breakdown of the national government’s budget, shows the national school nutrition programme is the biggest of the conditional grants.
A total of R4.9 billion was spent on the feeding scheme during the 2012/13 financial year to feed 8.7 million pupils every school day. This is an increase from 7.4 million pupils fed in the 2009/10 financial year at a cost of R2.4bn.
Expenditure over the medium term for this grant is also set to increase with allocations going from R4.9bn in 2012/13 to an estimated R5.7bn in 2015/16. - The Star