Women who received free meals in primary school have children with improved linear growth, according to a new study by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). It found that investments made in school meals in previous decades were associated with improvements in future child linear growth.

The report titled, “Intergenerational nutrition benefits of India’s national school feeding program”, mentioned that height-for-age z-score (HAZ) among children born to mothers with full mid-day meal (MDM) exposure was greater (+0.40SD) than that in children born to non-exposed mothers. Associations were stronger in low socio-economic strata and likely work through women’s education, fertility, and health service utilisation. MDM was associated with 13–32 per cent of the HAZ improvement in India from 2006 to 2016.

“Findings from previous evaluations of India’s MDM scheme have shown a positive association with beneficiaries’ school attendance, learning achievement, hunger and protein-energy malnutrition, and resilience to health shocks such as drought — all of which may have carry-over benefits to children born to mothers who participated in the program,” said Harold Alderman, study co-author.

The study co-authored by University of Washington’s Suman Chakrabarti and IFPRI’s Samuel Scott, Harold Alderman, Purnima Menon and Daniel Gilligan, was published in Nature Communications. The authors used nationally representative data on mothers and their children spanning 1993 to 2016 to assess whether MDM supports inter-generational improvements in child linear growth. Further, they suggest a potential pathway through which school feeding programs may have inter-generational effects on child nutrition outcomes.

Study findings

It found that investments made in school meals in previous decades were associated with improvements in future child linear growth. “Our findings suggest that intervening during the primary school years can make important contributions to reducing future child stunting, particularly given the cumulative exposure that is possible through school feeding programmes,” said Suman Chakrabarti.

Study results also show that school meals may contribute to education, later fertility decisions, and access to healthcare, reducing the risk of undernutrition in the next generation.

“School feeding programmes such as India’s MDM scheme have the potential for stimulating population-level stunting reduction as they are implemented at scale and target multiple underlying determinants of undernutrition in vulnerable groups,” said Samuel Scott.

Launched in 1995 by the Government of India, the mid-day meal (MDM) scheme provides a free cooked meal to children in government and government-assisted primary schools (classes I–V; ages 6–10 years). The mandated minimum meal energy content is 450kcal and the meal must contain 12gram of protein. In 2016–2017, 97.8 million children received a free cooked meal through the scheme every day, making the MDM scheme the largest school feeding programme in the world.