What products should actually be given in kindergartens and schools (MOH tables)

Since the beginning of the year, updated nutrition standards have come into force in all Ukrainian kindergartens and schools. Children are no longer fed sausages and pasta, the distribution of bread has been cut, and more cereals, seasonal vegetables, fruits and dairy products have been added to the diet. Salt is almost not put in dishes, sugar is not added to teas and compotes. And the menu has such exotic dishes as Chili con carne, Minestrone, Avgolemono soup, Blancmange and Monsieur de Calatrava.

Such innovations are being introduced as part of the catering reform, which aims to ensure that children in schools and kindergartens eat healthy food. However, in just two weeks since the beginning of the year, the new menu has been criticized to smithereens. Parents complain that the dishes are inedible, the children refuse to eat them, and go hungry all day. In addition, food has risen in price, but the promised increase in portions of meat, fruit and milk is not yet visible.

Most of all, the people took up arms against the author of the new menu, Yevgeny Klopotenko: they say that his culinary delights are not at all designed for kids and schoolchildren. And no Blancmange can replace a good old casserole. We tried to figure out whether these accusations are true, why children do not like new dishes, and what actually (according to the norms of the law) should be on the plates of kindergarteners and schoolchildren.

Avgolemono is nothing

The Internet is simply seething with criticism of the new reform. Memes and photo-toads have appeared on the network that ridicule the dishes of the authorship of Yevgeny Klopotenko. Because of this, one gets the impression that he alone is to blame for the fact that the food in the canteens has become tasteless and inedible. However, in reality this is not the case. New nutritional standards were developed by the Ministry of Health: it was the Ministry of Health that cut salt and sugar, bread and potatoes, removed sausages, sausages and canned food from the diet. For a moment, this was done in accordance with world practice: in no country in the world do children rely on 70 (!) Grams of sugar per day.

The Ministry of Health has developed clear requirements for how much food and in what quantities children of preschool and school age should per day. And Klopotenko only compiled according to these standards menu options. And by the way, kindergartens and schools are not at all obliged to follow it: each educational institution has the right to develop its own menu (within the requirements of the Ministry of Health) and feed children with other dishes. True, so far only a few have gone down this path - still, because in this case, the school risks taking on the criticism that is now directed at Klopotenko and the Ministry of Health.

Without salt, sugar and meat?

The first problem of the menu, which parents emphasize, is that the food has become insipid and tasteless according to the new requirements. It is impossible to eat porridge without salt, just like drinking cocoa without sugar. At the same time, Klopotenko writes on his Facebook page that these requirements were taken too literally by the leadership of kindergartens and schools. In fact, this issue provides for a transitional period of three (!) years, during which you need to gradually reduce the amount of sugar and salt to the level recommended by the Ministry of Health.

The second problem is unusual dishes, which are now given instead of traditional pasta or potatoes. Pea puree, pearl barley or bulgur, vegetable sauté, salads with beets, prunes or carrots with sour cream and horseradish sauce do not “come” to all children. Here, of course, the organizers of the process are to blame: for children (who are already conservative in eating), the transition to a healthy the food had to be extended in time, and not for three or four months, but for the same three years as for sugar with salt.

The third problem, which is increasingly being written about in social networks, is the “complete set” of dishes. A growing number of parents are reporting that their children are not being given the promised increased portions of meat, dairy, and fruit. "Where is the meat? Where is the fruit? They gave me lean buckwheat and raw carrot salad and cold, nasty cocoa. The child after school went to training hungry, ”user Vera Boyko wrote in the Facebook community“ Father SOS ”. “For three days there were no new products, namely, milk, cheese, fruits, vegetables were given only once,” Victoria Varushko agrees with her. And there are not just a few such comments, but hundreds.

But this is a direct violation, and not the menu developed by Klopotenko, but the norms of the Ministry of Health. Recall that they clearly spell out the number of all (!) Products that a child of preschool and school age should receive. For example, at school, with a one-time meal, poultry meat should be given twice a week, and fish once a week. It turns out that a schoolboy is not supposed to have a meat or fish dish every day. But vegetables and milk (yogurt, kefir, cheese or sour cream) should be on the menu every day. Nuts, fruits or berries - at least twice a week.

Tracking such violations is not so difficult: just check the daily menu with the norms of the Ministry of Health. Surprisingly, they are designed very specifically and spelled out very clearly. We will publish a table for kindergartens and schools at the end of the text. If you notice a discrepancy, first of all, you need to contact the administration of the educational institutions (preferably in writing, and make sure that your request is registered in the incoming correspondence). If the administration does not respond, feel free to write a complaint to the DPSS: for such statements, a special chat bot has been created in Telegram (@derzhspozhivsluzhba_bot).

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