Children of mid-day meal scheme beneficiaries show better growth: Study

Girls, who received free food in primary schools as part of the mid-day meal programme, have been found to give birth to children who have better growth, a new study has found. 

The study, which was recently published in journal Nature Communications, is titled 'Intergenerational nutrition benefits of India’s national school feeding program'. It has been co-authored by University of Washington’s Suman Chakrabarti and International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI’s) Samuel Scott, Harold Alderman, Purnima Menon and Daniel Gilligan. The study used nationally representative data on mothers and their children from 1993 to 2016 to assess whether mid-day meals support intergenerational improvements in a child’s linear growth. 

The mid-day meal scheme was launched by the central government in 1995 to provide free cooked meals to children in government and govern­ment-aided primary sc­h­ools (classes I–V; ages 6–10 years).