The practices and needs of dietitian in school lunch program in Taiwan

Nutrition-related problems among school-age children nowadays become potentially serious. In order to prevent obesity and other nutritionally related diseases in the young generation, a school lunch program has been proposed and conducted in Taiwan. It is to ensure that students' nutritional intake meets the daily requirement and to help students develop correct eating habits and maintain a healthy lifestyle. A professional dietitian who has a clear concept regarding food material utilization, cooking methods and nutritional values thus becomes important. However, the majority of schools in Taiwan are unable to offer the post of dietitian due to budgetary constraints and lack of organization. The responsibility of a dietitian is usually held by teachers, school nurses and other administrative staff. This problem has hindered the nutritional education in schools and made school lunches less beneficial to the children's nutritional needs. For the current status of dietitians in schools, a large gap is found between the currently supplied school lunches and the nutritionally standardized school lunches. It also exists in relation to education and hygiene. One of the solutions requires an infrastructure to support plans and policy, reasonable adequate budget, well human affairs establishment and coordination of all aspects. While the needed infrastructure is being proposed, an access to the professionalism of the currently employed dietitians can be strategically explored by constructing an education system. Through the system, schools without on-campus dietitians will be able to utilize their expertise with which the improvement of school lunches can be expectedly accomplished.