In an effort to fight the alarming rate of obesity among adults and children, the Nutrition Unit in the Ministry of Health (MoH) will be organising a "School Lunch Box" week from January 13 to 17.

The new information campaign, which coincides with the beginning of the first term of the new school year, is aimed at educating parents and children on the importance of healthy eating with regard to health status and performance at school.

During the five-day campaign, which will target all parents irrespective of whether they have previously been giving their children school lunch boxes to take to school, parents are to be educated on the importance of healthy eating. They will also learn what to add to their children's lunch boxes, how to tackle problems such as the reality of being obese, why children trade lunch box items with friends and why some lunch box items end up in the bin or return home untouched. 

The new campaign is also expected to bring some relief to parents who are worried about what their children are eating at school.

According to nutritionist Christina Esther of the MoH, the fact that overweight adults seen at nutrition clinics find it quite difficult to change bad eating habits responsible for their excess weight, the campaign would help them to change these old habits.

Promoting school lunch boxes will help children establish good eating habits at an early age, thus avoiding such a difficulty later on, she noted.

Nutritionist Esther added that there was sufficient evidence to prove that healthy eating helped children grow, develop and do well at school as well as become fit and productive adults.

Healthy eating habits significantly reduce childhood and adolescent health problems such as obesity, eating disorders, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, dental caries and anaemia while also preventing the development of these health problems later in life.

The Nutrition Unit in the MoH will during the whole of the "School Lunch Box" week sensitise the public about healthy eating through flyers, newspaper articles and radio and television programmes. 

In addition to that, a series of inter-school competitions, which will target schoolchildren, will be launched during the week. These competitions include: drawing of my lunch box (crèche category), my dream lunch box ( P1 to P3 category), poem with the title 'When I open my lunch box' (P4 to P6 category), short story entitled 'If only I had a lunch box' (S1 to S3 category) and essay entitled 'The benefits of lunch boxes' (S4 to S5 category).

Interesting prizes are to be won and the winners will receive their rewards at the beginning of the next school term.

The Nutrition Unit is expected to organise more of these activities throughout the year as a way of sensitising parents and children about good eating habits.

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