Dubai schools, colleges to serve healthier meals, reduce added sugars, increase fibre
Schools and colleges across Dubai are encouraged to serve healthier meals as part of an enhanced food and nutrition guideline introduced by the Dubai Municipality (DM). The rules require educational institutions to reduce added sugars, increase fibre, promote water intake, and reduce food waste, among other things.
The guideline also lays out per-serving size criteria to ensure clear portion control and consistent labelling. Serving tea and coffee will be regulated, and institutes will be required to plan sustainable meals by promoting locally sourced ingredients. This was revealed at the third edition of the Dubai Food Safety Forum, held on Tuesday.
DM will also use games and interactive methods to educate students about the importance of food safety. The civic body has launched a new e-learning platform called My School Food for this.
"Our material is based on games, and we teach them what food safety is,' said Dr Naseem Mohammed Rafie, Acting CEO of the Environment, Health and Safety Agency at Dubai Municipality. 'We educate them about the best temperature that you can keep food at, how to store food safely and other aspects of food safety which they can understand an implement easily. Children and youngsters are good ambassadors for ensuring safe practices."
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Nutrition in charge
The Civic body has also implemented a Nutrition in Charge (NIC) program for educational institutions, which equips a designated person with the knowledge and skills to promote and implement healthier nutrition practices in school food environments. This person will be in charge of ensuring nutitional compliance, promoting healthy eating habits, monitoring food quality, addressing nutrition-related concerns and training canteen staff.
Jumana Shamsudheen, Health and Food Safety Specialist at the School of Research Science, is the NIC for her institute. 'We design our menus to meet the nutritional and calorie requirements and submit our menus to Dubai Municipality for approval,' she said. 'It is sometimes hard to get the children on board because they want sugary and junk food. One day during the week, we allow one portion of an indulgent food as a treat for the kids. That day, they are the happiest. We also keep rotating the offerings so that they don't get bored."
Self-auditing in schools
Schools across the emirate will also have access to a self-auditing tool developed by DM to help the institutes assess the nutritional quality of their offerings. A smart dashboard will help track compliant stats, audit schedules and school statuses.
It will also show an interactive Dubai map showing real-time school nutrition compliance and have a built-in checklist to guide schools through nutrition compliance. It will have downloadable reports and documentation for audits and menu feedback.
According to Michael Leri Rivera Malonzo, Senior Applied Nutrition and Food Safety Awareness Officer at DM, the civic body wants to reach over 400,000 students in over 500 schools across the emirate.
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