Oat cookies, sambar rice on menu as MCD schools revamp mid-day meals

New Delhi: Oats cookies, fruit, kheer, and sambar rice will soon become part of the mid-day meals served to children in MCD schools, with the civic body planning a more varied menu across its nearly 1,500 schools from November, officials said on Wednesday.

They added that the new agencies that will run its school kitchens have been asked to add at least one "special" item to the regular meal every day to make nutritious food more appealing to children. Oatcakes and cookies are among the options being considered, apart from fruit and kheer, officials at the civic body said.

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"We are asking the companies to do something additional. Children get bored if they keep eating the same thing. If the same ingredients are made into something like a cookie or prepared in a way that children enjoy, they are more likely to eat it," a senior MCD official said.

The revised menu will include sambar rice and continue meals being served currently, such as puri-aloo, dal-rice, and chole-rice. The agencies will also be asked to introduce more variety in the preparations, with halwa made of wheat and ragi to be served twice a week, officials said.

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"On days when puri-aloo is served, children like it. We want them to eat everything, so the effort is to change the preparation rather than simply remove an item from the menu," another official said.

The changes come as the MCD prepares to hand over its school kitchens to a new set of agencies. The tender was floated around two months ago and surveys of shortlisted kitchens are underway. Officials said 13 new vendors are expected to come in, and the agencies are likely to be finalised by next week.

The civic body has also asked the agencies to work within their available kitchen infrastructure while introducing the additional items. The menu is being planned at the local level across zones, with dishes including puri-sabzi, dal-chawal, chole-chawal, rajma-chawal, kadhi-chawal continued to be served to students.

Under the Centre's PM POSHAN nutrition norms, a school meal is required to provide 450 calories and 12 grams of protein per child per day at the primary level.

Officials said that food supplied by the agencies is checked through five third-party laboratories, with four samples collected from each agency every month - three from the food served to students and one from the kitchen.

The menu changes also come against the backdrop of the Directorate of Education's earlier decision to introduce idli-sambar in school meals.

The department had directed schools and agencies to make arrangements for the dish by August 24, but officials said it has not yet been introduced due to a lack of funds for the specialised equipment required to prepare idlis in bulk.