Dubai plans to make school lunches safer for children. And they plan to do so through a new comprehensive programme. Yes, for this purpose, the Dubai Municipality has initiated a new comprehensive programme, which will ensure that schools, kindergartens, and nurseries have access to healthy and safe food. Here’s all you need to know about this development.
Dubai Municipality Monitors Food In Schools
Dubai is monitoring food at the school canteen through a new programme. This includes robust inspection, as revealed by Gulf News and is then supplemented by daily monitoring. This is through the DM Checked platform, which is basically a digital system offering a transparent way to track the canteen’s performance. Not to mention, it also helps in streamlining the process of approving menus.
Menus Must Align With Nutritional Guidelines
As it happens, all menus must now align with specific nutritional guidelines and food safety standards of the wife. Additionally, a team of five food safety inspectors will also be responsible for overseeing 456 educational institutions annually. Working in tandem with the applied nutrition and awareness section, proper training will be given to the canteen and nutrition staff for this purpose.
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Awareness Sessions For Students
Additionally, the municipality will also directly engage with students through awareness sessions. They will promote healthy eating, reduce food waste, and promote safe food practices. Implementation of the smart food choice system in all canteens is an important part of this initiative. and the system will categorise food into four colour-coded groups. These would be green, yellow, red and black, which would be for encouraging a greater availability of healthy options.
The municipality also aims to conduct an extensive inspection of other school facilities. Yes, these checks would extend to air conditioning systems, water supply networks, and even swimming pools, to name some. So, if there is non-compliance, there will be immediate action, which could be the removal of non-conforming product.
So with this development, it’s safe to say that the emirate is doing everything in its power to ensure that children have access to healthy and safe food at schools
Cover Image Courtesy: X/DMunicipality