The rate of school children skipping breakfast dropped after a year-long subsidized breakfast program strengthened the concept of nutrition for parents, said Lee Wen (李文), an adviser to the Eden Social Welfare Foundation.
Lee said the change came about as a result of the “Happy Breakfast” project for rural area children, which was implemented in 40 elementary schools in rural areas and outlying islands starting last September.
The program provided a total of 821 school children with “subsidized breakfasts” during school days, he said.
Enlightened by the “Happy Breakfast” drive, parents who once did not provide breakfast to their children during weekends or holidays have become more conscious of health and nutrition, preparing breakfast for their children even on days when they do not have to attend school, Lee said.
The sponsors of the project found that only 8.6 percent of the schools’ students did not eat breakfast on weekends or holidays, compared to 44.3 percent in the first semester of the last academic year, when the breakfast program was first launched.
Lee said government data on the percentage of children who ate breakfast were flawed.
He said data compiled by the Department of Health (DOH) between 2001 and 2002 found that about 80 percent of elementary school students in Taiwan between the ages of six and 13 had the habit of eating breakfast, while 90 percent of them had the habit of eating lunch and dinner.
The data also showed that 25 percent of elementary school students had to skip one of three meals everyday due to financial problems at home.
The department’s data showed that the meal that was usually skipped was breakfast.
Lee also said the calculated improvement was probably “too optimistic.”
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