Acceptance and Impact of Millet-Based Mid-Day Meal on the Nutritional Status of Adolescent School Going Children in a Peri Urban Region of Karnataka State in India

Anitha, S and Kane-Potaka, J and Tsusaka, T W and Tripathi, D and Upadhyay, S and Kavishwar, A and Jalagam, A and Sharma, N and Nedumaran, S (2019) Acceptance and Impact of Millet-Based Mid-Day Meal on the Nutritional Status of Adolescent School Going Children in a Peri Urban Region of Karnataka State in India. Nutrients (TSI), 11 (9). pp. 1-16. ISSN 2072-6643

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Abstract

The study assessed the potential for use of millets in mid-day school meal programs for better nutritional outcomes of children in a peri-urban region of Karnataka, India, where children conventionally consumed a fortified rice-based mid-day meal. For a three-month period, millet-based mid-day meals were fed to 1500 adolescent children at two schools, of which 136 were studied as the intervention group and were compared with 107 other children in two other schools that did not receive the intervention. The intervention design was equivalent to the parallel group, two-arm, superiority trial with a 1:1 allocation ratio. The end line allocation ratio was 1.27:1 due to attrition. It was found that there was statistically significant improvement in stunting (p = 0.000) and the body mass index (p = 0.003) in the intervention group and not in the control group (p = 0.351 and p = 0.511, respectively). The sensory evaluation revealed that all the millet-based menu items had high acceptability, with the highest scores for the following three items: finger millet idli, a steam cooked fermented savory cake; little and pearl millet bisi belle bath, a millet-lentil hot meal; and upma, a pearl and little millet-vegetable meal. These results suggest significant potential for millets to replace or supplement rice in school feeding programs for improved nutritional outcomes of children.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Research Program : East & Southern Africa Research Program : Innovation Systems for the Drylands (ISD) Strategic Marketing and Communication
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	school feeding program; mid-day meal; millets; sensory evaluation; undernutrition; Karnataka; India; malnutrition; children
Subjects:	Mandate crops > Millets Others > Karnataka Others > Food and Nutrition Others > Food Security Others > India
Depositing User:	Mr Ramesh K
Date Deposited:	03 Sep 2019 10:58
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2019 03:45
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/11277
Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11092077
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	UNSPECIFIED
Acknowledgement:	The authors thank the Government of Karnataka for approving to conduct this study which was supported by Akshaya Patra, ICRISAT, and the Smart Food Endowment Fund.
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