Karnataka: Proposal to keep egg-meat out of mid-day meal, teach Manusmriti under NEP
A position paper under the National Policy on Education (NEP) in Karnataka states that serving eggs in the mid-day meal to school children can lead to lifestyle disorders in them.
According to a report in The Hindu, the National Education Policy’s position paper on health and welfare states that serving eggs to school children in the mid-day meal will lead to discrimination among students and eggs and eggs given the small physical structure of Indians. The extra energy they get from cholesterol by regular consumption of meat will give rise to lifestyle disorders in them.
This position paper has been prepared by an expert committee headed by John Vijay Sagar, Professor and Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru.
The committee says that serving different meals to students of the same class will create an imbalance in the distribution of nutrients among the children. For example, serving other dishes or food to students of the same class, such as egg versus pulses or egg versus banana, will promote nutrient imbalance in children.’
The committee also gave reasons that children would develop such attitudes which would result in emotional hindrance among friends. “True Indian philosophy or religion is to treat all children equally without discrimination,” the committee said.
The committee has recommended that ‘sattvik food’ such as groundnut, sesame laddus or jaggery chikkis are ‘natural foods’. It helps in removing stunted growth and anemia.
It is mandatory to upload the position paper on the NCERT website for implementation of NEP. These letters will be used by the Ministry of Education while compiling each subject, taking suggestions and creating a national curriculum framework.
The state government has constituted 26 committees to prepare status papers on various subjects in school education and submit them to NCERT, Dr. Sagar is the chairman of the committee to give recommendations in the field of nutrition.
In his recommendations, he cited studies from other countries to suggest that animal-based diets interfere with hormonal activity in humans. He has emphasized on giving gene-diet i.e. DNA related diet, the natural choice of Indian breed needs to be considered.
The committee has also recommended, ‘The stories of eating habits of Bhima and Hanuman help children to associate eating the right food with bravery, courage and success.’ On the other hand, there is also a fact that the state government and government and The children of government aided schools are already distributing boiled eggs and bananas.
Children between the ages of 6 and 15 years in pre-primary schools in seven districts of Kalyan Karnataka and Karnataka Public School, who are suffering from malnutrition, anemia and protein deficiency, are given boiled eggs and bananas. The government is planning to expand this program to the entire state.
The status papers included Knowledge of India, Value Education, Social Science Education, Pre-School Education and Foundation Literacy and Computational Skills, Health and Well Being Environmental Education and others.
Experts have expressed concern over some of the proposals made in the status papers.
