Education officials push for stronger monitoring of healthy foods in schools

Education officials have urged schools and canteen operators to monitor and maintain healthy eating initiatives, stressing that healthy school environments are critical to students’ development and well-being.

The call came on Tuesday at the Erdiston Teachers’ Training College, where the Ministry of Education hosted a two-day Barbados School Nutrition Policy Health and Safety Teachers’ Capacity Training Workshop to strengthen the implementation of the National School Nutrition Policy.

Deputy Chief Education Officer Julia Beckles appealed directly to those preparing and selling food in and around schools.

“I make this call to those in our schools who run our canteens. I make this call to the vendors in and around our schools,” she said.

“To continue to do what is right in offering our students healthy alternatives, I especially trust that you will do so as a matter of your own attitude to health, to the health and well-being of our children.”

Beckles said Barbados’ school nutrition policy must be seen as part of a national effort.

“The creation, and I dare say the maintenance, of healthy school environments requires a multi-sectoral and an integrated approach. In short, and in other words, an all of Barbados approach.”

She cited Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which speaks to children’s right to protection, care and healthy spaces.

“Today the focus is on our students. I expect that we will continue to ensure that the environments in and around our schools are conducive to maintaining, or are doing their part to be part of that environment of health,” she said.

“That is critical for our students, and that environment is not only at the school itself, it is on our students’ way to school.”

Beckles also raised concern about Barbados’ high rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

“But the monitoring and the maintenance of it is where the challenges occur, because if you don’t keep the whole business of healthy eating in the minds of everyone, what will happen, and what has happened in some cases, is that people revert to their old ways of doing things,” she said.

“So I trust that today with you being trained, you will leave with the knowledge and you will leave with a passion, greater passion even, for ensuring that our children are thriving and learning in safe environments.”

Deputy Nutrition Officer at the National Nutrition Centre Brian Payne echoed her concerns, especially around rising diabetes cases among school-aged children.

“The challenges [are that] a lot of things adopted are accepted in our culture. These are some very unhealthy practices, whether it be the excess of consumer beverages. And as you know, we have Christmas coming up… our culture is one which tends to kind of promote or reinforce these wonderful, unhealthy habits.”

Payne said the policy takes a broad view of health in schools.

“I think the key thing about the Barbados school nutrition policy is that it is grounded in a whole-school approach. So it’s not only the students, or it’s not only the teachers, but we also can appreciate that we’re talking about everyone within the school food environment,” he said.

“The key thing here is to change the school food and physical activity environment and to support teachers and administrators in terms of making the school a healthy place for children to be.”

(LG)