Nutrition and education

In many parts of the world, children come to school with empty stomachs. They may miss their morning meal, not get enough of the right things to eat, or be required to work before school.

As a result, they come to school with little energy to concentrate or participate in classes. These hungry children are more prone to low performance, to be absent from school, to fall sick and to drop out.

The UN World Food Programme estimates that 115 million school-aged children do no go to school. 97 percent of these children live in developing countries.

For poor families the food that the child gets at school means that the family can save on one meal, and in many cases this is a good enough reason to send children to school.

Several studies prove the beneficial impact of school feeding on both health and school performance. A recent study on the impact of school feeding in Bangladesh concluded that:

“SFP (School Feeding Programme) improves child nutritional status. It increases the body mass index (BMI) of participating children by an average of 0.62 points. This represents a 4.3 percent increase compared to the average BMI of schoolchildren in the control group.” and that “SFP improves academic performance. Participation in the SF program increases test scores by 15.7 percentage points. Participating students do especially well in mathematics.” (IFPRI for United Nations University, November 2004).