Even with the various other developmental challenges that are on its plate our policy-makers, particularly those responsible for overseeing the child health regime in the schools system, should take a serious look at the UNICEF 2019 “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” report which, in its section on the global problem of overweight and obesity, makes a point of saying that the overarching concern over this particular health challenge extends to schoolchildren, worldwide.
Part of what makes the observation interesting is that there might appear to be a paradox in UNICEF’s observation given the popular assumption that overweight and obesity are, arguably, not the sorts of challenges that one ought to have to associate with what, in theory at least, should be the most physically active and by extension the fittest section of our population. And while the report may not have specifically singled out the Caribbean or Guyana for any specific mention in relation to overweight and obesity, it alludes specifically to causes of these maladies in children that are unmistakably present in the Guyana food consumption culture. It is, in other words, a matter of ‘who the cap fits, draw the string.’
Readers would, of course, already have surmised that what is being alluded to here is the seemingly incurable habit of fast food consumption amongst school-age children, preferences varying from one franchise to the next, each of them seemingly having cornered particular chunks of a market that continues to grow in terms of juvenile patron appeal. The fast food offerings, of course, are usually well-attended by volumes of sweetened aerated drinks.
According to the UNICEF Report, upwards of 250 million people ranging from pre-school children to nineteen year-olds are overweight and while the report does not link the phenomenon of weight gain exclusively to fast food intake, the fact that it goes to the trouble to juxtapose the two suggests that there is a serious concern about a likely nexus between what we loosely describe as ‘junk food’ and weight gain issues.
There are times when we are inclined to forget that issues of health and wellness are partially the responsibility of schools’ and that one of the responsibilities of teachers is to pay some measure of attention to the mental and physical considerations that might impact on the nexus between teaching and learning. Since what children eat can become a classroom concern, neither the Ministry of Education nor the schools, individually, should allow observations like those made by UNICEF to go unnoticed.
By and large, the food-related interventions in the state school system are limited to what one might call economic supplements, designed to ensure that a limited number of children do not have to go hungry during their stay at school. Whether the admittedly complementary efforts to ensure that some children from needy circumstances do not always go hungry can be equated with taking care of their critical nutritional requirements is, however, an entirely different matter. It is to this latter concern that the UNICEF report speaks and that is the challenge that this editorial seeks to address.
Here it has to be said that the Ministry of Education finds itself in a sort of haven’t-we-got-enough-on-our-plates (?) situation, though, truthfully, one can think of no better state institution at whose feet to place this issue. And since the issue of the consumption of fast foods is largely (not exclusively, but largely) a school-related issue we thought it best to throw out some of the findings of the Report to a few teachers. Some of the responses were revealing. We found, for example, that significant numbers of teachers appeared surprised that Fast Food snack packs as parent-approved midday meals was a ‘problem,’ so to speak. Not only did those teachers see nothing wrong with the Fast Food lunches but they told us, bluntly, that children’s diets were a matter between themselves and their parents. Some thankfully, differed, not only accepting our theory regarding the nexus between the health implications of what children eat and how they might fare in the learning setting, but further venturing to suggest that the proliferation of Fast Food consumption by schoolchildren as mid-day meals (we are aware of at least one city school where groups of children actually order-in fast foods at lunchtime) was a function of the failure of both the Ministry and the Schools themselves in terms of what they saw as the obligation of those institutions to exercise some measure of supervision over what children eat at least while they are on school premises.
The Deputy Head of a prominent state-run Primary School in Georgetown, for instance, responded to one of our questions arising out of what UNICEF had to say in its Report by pointing out that the problem of fast-food consumption by children during the school day was, in essence, part of a wider manifestation of ‘a loss of teacher control,’ a circumstance which, intriguingly, the Deputy Head attributed to ‘the attitude of parents and the Ministry of Education.” It was, it seemed, one way of saying that insofar as helping to protect the nutritional welfare of children is concerned, both the Ministry, but before that, parents were negligent. “Some of us would like to ban fast foods from schools’ premises but we have no authority to do so,” the Deputy Head Teacher told us.
Here it is that while a UNICEF report is stating unambiguously that our children’s fast foods and carbonated drinks’ consumption patterns and their lack of adequate exercise may not only be compromising their health, down the road, that message, at least up until now, is being ignored by large numbers of parents. Simultaneously, there is no evidence of any robust effort on the part of the Ministry of Education to issue a clear across-the-board directive on the fast foods in schools issue.
The Ministry of Education’s historic leaden-footedness on this issue aside, there is, as well, the likely response from the business community, particularly the growing number of fast food franchises that have established outposts in Guyana in relatively recent years. Some parents too are bound to make the point about the convenience of a ready-prepared mid-day meal while teachers, some of whom may themselves be partial to a similar mid-day fare, are likely to groan inwardly at what they may see as yet another in-school policing job that can be both tedious and frustrating.
We are told that the Ministry of Education has a Unit that is responsible for “School Health.” It is entirely reasonable to assume that its responsibilities include keeping tabs on reports like the recently released UNICEF report. Further, this is by no means the first time that credible sources have alluded to links between significant consumption of fast foods and overweight and obesity in children. However, challenging the implications of responding to what UNICEF has had to say on this issue there is no reason why it ought not to be high on the Ministry of Education’s agenda. Further, whatever we do about fast food consumption should be attended by the effective implementation of a long overdue compulsory and serious physical exercise regimen in our school system.
