J. Kennedy

James Kennedy

Changing Habits: Introducing Free Breakfast Program in Rural Northwest China

Description of Research:

The research: Although few children starve in contemporary rural China, malnutrition remains a serious problem if the rural areas. There are two reasons for the persistence of this problem.  One is the number of meals children receive per day and the other is quality of meals.  In rural northwest China, the custom is to eat two meals a day.  This is a rural habit that has been going on for generations.  While families some of the more developed areas in rural China have become more accustom eating three meals a day, some of the poor regions still maintain this practice.  The result is many elementary school age children suffer from malnutrition in these poorer areas. In addition, most children tend to eat grains with little or no protein or vegetables.   We conducted several Random Control Trials (RTC) in rural northwest China to determine if specific interventions can improve the nutritional standards of rural children.  In September 2009, we randomly selected 75 schools and surveyed over 3,000 students and their parents.  The baseline survey measured student’s weight and height also their academic performance scores. Then a one-egg-a-day free breakfast program was introduced to all schools (this is actually a new government program that was introduced provincial wide).  In 15 schools we also introduced a special “vitameal” program.  Vitameal is an vitamin enriched oatmeal.  Another 15 schools received a multivitamin and another 15 schools, the parents received nutritional information including the need for three meals a day (i.e. breakfast). The remaining 30 schools did not receive any extra intervention (i.e. control schools).  In September 2010, we measured the same students from each school including height, weight and academic scores to see which (if any) of the interventions made a difference. First we found that all the children in the same are well below the World Health Organization standard for height, weight and age.  The second result is that the multivitamins are the best intervention to improve nutrition over vitameal and family nutritional information.  Finally, many families did not change their eating habits (i.e. from two to three meals a day) even with provision of nutrition information.  The result from this RCT is several policy briefs for the provincial and central level Ministry of Education on how to effectively reduce malnutrition rates in rural northwest China.