Dubai students get crash course in eating healthy
dubai — More than 150 students from four schools attended a threeday Healthy Breakfast workshop conducted by the Dubai Municipality. The event was organised to encourage children and their families to have a healthy and balanced breakfast during the school day.
More than 25 parents also attended the workshop.
The workshop held by the food safety department saw participation of students of Arab, Indian, Iranian and Asian nationalities. The event offered live cooking stations and fun activities that encouraged participants to make and eat healthy breakfast. The activities also included cooking competitions, finding hidden sugar in food, healthy lunch box, reading nutrition labels, food safety tips and fun games.
The games were aimed at guiding them about food safety and nutritional values. Complimentary healthy breakfast dishes were served to all invitees. The dishes prepared during the workshop included spinach lasagna, chicken machbous and sheikh al Mahchi. A master chef competition included salad setup table, evaluation process and an awards ceremony.
“A healthy breakfast will support the child’s health, contribute to his concentration and absorptive capacity during classes and will also help maintain constant energy levels during the morning,” said Jehaina Hassan Al Ali, food studies and surveys officer at the food safety department.
“Breakfast is an important meal of the day and it is necessary that schoolchildren start the day with healthy food. A healthy breakfast can fuel them throughout the day and support them in paying attention and sustaining their energy level during the school hours. However, many children skip breakfast and this could affect them adversely,” she said.
“We also see that parents choose sugary cereals, chocolate cereal bars or fortified chocolate drinks for breakfast thinking that these foods are a nutritious choice. Recent studies show that children take more than half of their daily allowance of sugar — that is around 11 grammes — from sugary cereals in the morning.
“However, what parents don’t pay attention to is that these options are more likely to be loaded with sugar and unhealthy fats and salt. These ingredients have been linked
A healthy breakfast will support the child’s health, contribute to his concentration and absorptive capacity during classes.” Jehaina Hassan Al Ali, Dubai Municipality
highly to the risk of developing most common chronic diseases in UAE such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity,” she said.
She added: “We need to change the breakfast food culture of children from an energy-dense but poorly-balanced diet to a more diverse and nutritious one. Parents as well as schools need to provide more fruits and vegetables in the children’s breakfast meal, alongside unflavoured dairy options, which give children satiety and constant energy throughout the morning to support them with their academic progress,” explained Al Ali.
The Dubai Municipality is currently implementing the new school nutrition guidelines for school canteens that emphasise the importance of regulating portion size, food labelling, restricting fatty and sugary food, and encouraging the provision of fruits and vegetables.
reporters@khaleejtimes.com