Title: The preschool & school meal delivery system reform
Country: Russian Federation
Population: 1,252,000
Date of start: 08/2006
SDGs: 2,3,4,12
Description
Due to the increasing sightings of children obesity and diseases of digestive system in 2006, was approved the municipal program “Healthy nutrition for children”. To implement the program, a dedicated “Department of Food and Social Nutrition” was created as a single municipal operator, whose main task was to bring meal preparation and delivery to a unified world-class standard for all schools of Kazan.
During the past ten years, the technological equipment of school kitchens was modernized and two preparation factories, warehouses were created.
To date, the department provides food in 160 educational institutions of Kazan, mostly built during the Soviet era. Since in many school kitchens cooking hot meals was not possible, a decision was made to introduce a new Cook & Chill technology for preparing school lunches. It allows to quickly prepare the largest number of dishes, increase their shelf life, and maintain freshness and quality.
Most of the suppliers are the largest local producers located in the rural areas near Kazan that belong to the larger Kazan agglomeration. 90% of the Department’s purchases are Russian-made products, about 80% of which are from the rural areas of the Republic of Tatarstan.
To ensure high-quality nutrition, products for school meals are monitored by an accredited techlab that on average conducts 6,500 tests monthly.
Kazan is the first city in Russia that introduced cashless payments for school meals. A single card is a convenient payment tool that eliminates the need to carry cash for school meals and allows parents to monitor in real time their children nutrition.
In school canteens, the Department organizes culinary workshops for children and parents, promoting a healthy eating culture. In addition, to establish a dialogue with parents on the quality of nutrition each school has the Parental Control Journal for reviews on the quality of dishes. For children, dedicated smartphone apps with information about the weekly menu were developed.
For elementary school students, the price for hot breakfast is 65 rubles (1 EUR), for two meals (breakfast and lunch) – 95 rubles (1.5 EUR). For high school students, the cost of lunch is 70 rubles (1.1 EUR). This is one of the lowest prices in the Russian Federation. The Department organizes meals for 150 thousand children in Kazan. Children from low-income families (18% of the total) receive free meals. In 2018, 2.5 million EUR were allocated for these purposes from the city budget.
Thanks to the Healthy nutrition for children program, now all children can eat equally healthy and well in school canteens, regardless of the material well-being of their families.
The winning city established a “Department on Food and Social Nutrition” to launch a reform of school canteens for improved sustainability and health, to fight obesity and other diseases.
Motivation of the MPA 2019 Evaluation Committee
As part of this reform, the city built 2 centralized cooking centers, serving 160 schools and 150.000 meals per day, while maintaining a price control for breakfast and lunch the lowest prices in the country.
