This becomes especially important for children and teenager in order to grow as a healthy adult. It is appalling though that in reality, most children—who usually still in school age and spend most of their time at school—do not get any food with sufficient nutrition value in their school canteen. Unclean cooking station and utility, bad ingredient materials, reusing cooking oil for God know how many times are just some trembling examples of what will go through the youngster's mouth. Either because it is overlooked or it was even never looked at before, there are practically any such rules regulating foods that being implemented to students in school. Much of our neighboring countries in the region already covered this issue while Indonesia stands idle. Australia and Singapore, for example, have separate under-secretary to oversee the quality of food that being distributed to the students under their Ministry of Education. Violation of the imposed rules may cause penalty and their government takes this issue seriously as both countries realized how valuable healthy children to the future of the country. There is absolutely no reason that Indonesia could not follow its neighbor steps with at least three basic acts that can be argued as a work to improve the condition we are in, which are: a subsidized school canteen, publishing of rules and guidelines, and a wide media coverage.
First to begin with, a subsidized school canteen. At the moment, it is only a handful of school—mostly private schools—that actually organized their own canteen to make sure only the top notch quality of food being served to their pupils. Much of the rest, if not almost all, care less of what happens in the canteen and just literally rent the slots to whoever tenant interested in opening a food business in the school canteen area. This is normal, remembering that most schools do not have a specific budget to procure and distribute food with the intended quality. Pressuring the school to allocate the budget will only lead to leverage the tuition fee even higher which will not be a viable solution, especially for the parents. By subsidizing a specific allocation of national budget to cover up this issue, both the school administrator and parent are exempted from the original burdens. The school will no longer have any doubt in their budget management and the parent does not need to put extra workload just to make sure their children having an edible and healthy food. Most of the modern countries—mainly in Europe, like Finland and Switzerland which were known for gallant example of an excellent human quality service—do this because they understand that subsidizing on matters like fuel—which is happening right now—would not solve any issue. Subsidizing on healthy food for children instead is like investing for a better future generation. At worst, we will reap a better labor force in the future because a good nutrition helps the fulfillment of potential growth of one’s body. At best, we will have brighter and educated minds since research shows that the intake of good nutrition since early age affects the brain to develop better. This method will also ease the amount of work for the government. Ensuring a healthy community is a mandatory obligation of a functional government. By sharing this task via schools’ hand, the government is doing their job without actually put their own hand into the dirt. Either way, it is a very win-win step to take and should not be delayed a moment longer.
Afterward is publishing certain rules and guidelines. Normally school canteen provides the students only during lunch break when the heaviest intake of food being consumed. Yet, there is no clear guideline on how much is much and how less is less for a menu to be consumed and deemed appropriate to fulfill the nutrition value. To be exact, even the word ‘healthy’ and ‘nutrition’ need to be clearly defined to avoid misunderstanding. Of course, there are several guidelines already published by an international organization like the World Health Organization or Food and Agriculture Organization that reached via consensus between countries, but we still need to remember that things like geographical, cultural, and racial—in a genetically speaking—matter when it comes to a practical guideline. Clearly, Caucasian living in Europe will have different nutrition value needs than their Asian counterpart living in Asia. Another example, while meat needs to be given once a week, the type of meat must meet the local culture habits e.g. we could not give pork in a predominantly Muslim country like Indonesia or cow meat in Bali which citizens are mostly Hindu. Those are just some example why Indonesia need to craft its own guideline while still referring to the international guideline to keep our own updated. Besides, by having no guideline whatsoever, schools will have no ethical obligation nor necessary referral to fulfill their part to unleash the maximum potential of a child. Adjacent to the guideline is naturally the rule, to keep things from fallen apart and legally binding. The rules may come in the form of an act of parliament—to set the basic framework—or simply government regulation—to put the practical elements in order. The rules made either by the lawmaker or the government should set either governmental or independent commission to overwatch the whole process, from the distribution of the said funding till receiving complaints or suggestion from the public community. The aforesaid rule will also help to place the relationship between the school and the government as a mutual partner hand to hand. If these are followed, surely a clear chain of command and process will ensure a healthy food delivered to the hand of every student in their school canteen.
Finally, a widespread media and ad campaign. In a democratic country, common people is the source of all power. At the end of the day, people voice will be deemed as the final words, and that is exactly why the issue should be put into their ears. It will be futile for the whole process if the people themselves do not understand the harm of unhealthy food that lingers every day in their children canteen—or even in their own canteen if the said people are still in school age. Equally said, if the people understand the reason behind all this healthy food issue it will encourage them to do the same in their own household. The best way of socializing a new awareness is definitely the word of mouth. The problem is how to put the word itself into people’s mouth, which the answer will be a media. It is well known that our country is one of the biggest user contributors for social media like Facebook and Twitter. Those can be used as a starting point to advance the issue as both media famous of its characteristic as viral to catchy issues. Another media to be considered is undoubtedly the conventional one, like newspaper and television. While social media pretty much penetrating almost all level of citizens, the daily users are usually in the age range of 10 to 40. Newspaper campaign can tackle this problem because the segmented reader usually in the age range of 25 and up, whereas television even tears down the boundary for fusing with almost all range of age. Once the issue already spread up and people become conscious of what is happening, it will only become a matter of time for class suit, the pressure to the lawmaker, and protest rally to expedite the issue.
In the end, despite the fact that our country has not taken any measure to improve the quality of food that being served in the school canteen, it is still not too late. In fact, there is no such word as late to start to improve the quality of our younger generation. These written previous paragraphs are just some of the basic examples of what need to be taken in order to advance the issue, yet those are the crucial one. It is worth to be remembered that our society these days always works like a domino when the issue successfully trickled down to the road with the written arguments, the rest will follow. The bump that this issue may face being put forward is probably the dismissive thought from our people that subject like improving the quality of school canteen food is not an emergency and fundamental for the time being. This is what needs to straighten up, that a better quality of food served this day worth every dime, for this country, will reap the benefit of a healthy adult and an improvised life quality in general. Now is also the appropriate time to put changes, remembering that our country just finished an election and ready to start a new chapter with a new government administration. After all, what else do we hope, as a human being, other than ensuring a brighter future for our next generation by the time we part the world?
By Ade Putu Dilarse
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