Oats cookies, fruits, kheer and sambar rice are likely to be added to the mid-day meal menu for children in MCD schools from November. The civic body plans to introduce more variety across nearly 1,500
schools to make nutritious meals more appealing to students, officials said.
Under the revised plan, agencies managing school kitchens will be asked to add at least one “special” item to the regular meal each day. Options being considered include oats cookies, fruits and kheer.
“We are asking the companies to do something additional. Children get bored if they keep eating the same thing. If the same ingredients are made into something like a cookie or prepared in a way that children enjoy, they are more likely to eat it,” a senior MCD official said.
The revised menu will include sambar rice, while existing meals such as puri-aloo, dal-rice and chole-rice will continue. Officials said wheat and ragi halwa will also be served twice a week.
The changes come as the MCD prepares to appoint new agencies to operate its school kitchens. The tender was issued around two months ago, and inspections of shortlisted kitchens are underway. Around 13 new vendors are expected to be selected.
Meals such as puri-sabzi, dal-chawal, chole-chawal, rajma-chawal and kadhi-chawal will continue to be served across different zones.
Under the Centre’s PM POSHAN norms, meals for primary school students must provide 450 calories and 12 grams of protein per child each day.
Officials said food supplied by the agencies is tested through five third-party laboratories. Four samples are collected from each agency every month—three from food served to students and one from the kitchen.
The menu changes come after the Directorate of Education also proposed adding idli-sambar to school meals. However, the dish has not yet been introduced due to a lack of funds for the specialised equipment needed to prepare idlis in large quantities.
