In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), there are no school canteens or school meals, and snacks are distributed only in one canton, so children resort to the worst options offered by bakeries and fast food restaurants.
Master of Nutrition Nevena Pandza believes that every school can work on offering children different options for school snacks and introducing more fruits and vegetables into their diet.
“In this way, they have access to mainly bakery products, which is not a problem if they eat it once every five or ten days. However, if a child eats bakery or dried meat products every day, then we are talking about a nutritional deficit of vitamins and minerals and potential health risks,” warns Pandza.
Overweight and obesity are on the rise among elementary school students
She also warns about the increasing number of obese children who have health problems.
Moreover, Pandza noted that the vending machines installed in some schools, mostly middle schools, can offer much healthier meals, which the school will design in cooperation with small producers. Thus, she explains, instead of Coca-Cola, children could have 100 percent juice from a domestic producer or apple chips or some other vegetable at the vending machines.
The Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) study conducted by UNICEF in 2018 among school-aged children showed a generally low level of knowledge about the nutrition of children and their parents.
Only 10 percent of parents know how much fruit and vegetables school-age children should consume per day, while every third child eats sweets once or more a day (32 percent), every fourth child drinks carbonated and non-carbonated sweet drinks at least once a day (24 percent), and every fifth child consumes chips and other snacks (19 percent).
Recent data released by government partners shows worrying trends and states that in some areas up to 50 percent of school-aged children are obese, which seems to point to the fact that primary school children are more obese than children under the age of 5.
E.Dz.
