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FSSAI launches Yellow Book to promote safe, nutritious food in schools
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Saturday, 09 September, 2017, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, New Delhi
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The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) launched The Yellow Book – Your Guide to Safe and Nutritious Food @ School, that provides age-appropriate content which can be adopted across schools through state education machinery as a part of their curricular and co-curricular activities.
The Yellow Book covers topics such as good food safety practices, personal hygiene and cleanliness habits, eating a balanced diet, packing a wholesome lunchbox, preventing nutritional deficiencies and making healthy choices.
It also includes useful tips and interesting activities for school children. It can be used independently as a guide, as well as an activity book in conjunction with the existing curricula in schools.
It has been formulated after discussions, consultations and extensive engagement with various education boards, such as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the state boards, nutrition and education experts.
The habits inculcated in childhood create sustainable patterns of behaviour and help to ensure a lifetime of healthy and safe food choices.
Moreover, children can be powerful agents of change in the society. FSSAI’s Safe and Nutritious Food (SNF) @School initiative is based on this philosophy.
Over 100 representatives from the Central and state governments, academia, school boards, voluntary organisations and corporates have joined hands towards a cohesive effort to build capacities of schools across the country for adopting safe and nutritious food (SNF) habits.
Kellogg’s has offered to print and distribute 10,000 Yellow Books. ITC has already launched an interactive voice response system- (IVRS) based quiz on safe and nutritious food in eight languages across India.
GSK has adopted 1,000 schools across four states to promote safe and nutritious food. Mondelez has adopted 40 schools in North Delhi.
While Emami, Tetra Pak and Marico have taken up activation programmes across 1,000 schools, PepsiCo has reached out to colleges to support SNF Fellows under this initiative.
The Rotary Club will soon be working with 75,000 schools across India to incorporate the Yellow Book into school curricula.
FSSAI also launched the School Engagement Platform, a portal that works as an online tool for schools to register and utilise resource material to undertake relevant activities for inculcating healthy food habits amongst children.
Going forward, it will also provide an assessment framework to highlight model schools that are pioneers in adopting the safe and nutritious school framework.
Additionally, an engagement platform was also launched to support and facilitate connections between various organisations or individuals who would like to take up this initiative.
Interested stakeholders including civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), corporates, development partners, mobilisation agencies, training partners or philanthropists who wish to participate may enroll themselves on the online portal and look for suitable projects to support under voluntary or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
Vinod K Paul, member (health), NITI Aayog, launched the Yellow Book along with Ashish Bahuguna, chairperson, FSSAI.
The event witnessed participation from senior officials from the ministry of health and family welfare, government and officials from various key organisations at the state level.
Bahuguna said, “This holistic effort towards co-creating the culture of safe and wholesome food amongst schools with support of education machinery would go a long way in preparing our children as real change agents.”
“The efforts are centred around building a robust curriculum, framework for easy adoption using digital solutions, enhancing capabilities of teachers through training mechanism and connecting like-minded stakeholders through a common platform,” he added.
“This would ensure that the vital knowledge reaches to the entire target population, so that we can together achieve the vision of safe and healthy schools in our country,” Bahuguna said.
In his special address, Paul said, “Health should be a part of our responsibility as a society and as individuals. Schools are our natural partners for promoting health. The value and nobility behind this initiative is profound. I must congratulate the entire team at FSSAI.”
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