Nutritious meal benefits rural students in Yunnan

Students have their nutritional meals at one rural school in Gejiu, a city of Yunnan province in Southwest China. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

China's nutritious meal program has improved rural students' physical fitness and helped more students to study in rural schools.

"The average height and weight of students in our school have greatly improved since the introduction of nutritional food," said Zhang Yongming, head teacher of Gejia Primary School in Gejiu, a city of Yunnan province in Southwest China.

Zhang, who has worked in education sector for more than 10 years, said that every student in his school can receive four yuan worth of nutritional meals every day, including three yuan meat, vegetable and one yuan rice.

"Ever since the nutrition plan took effect, the students' parents have been worrying less," he added. There are 129 students in this school.

Pu Zhouxin and Li Yuting, two 13-year-old girls, said they like the meals at school and added that they have different dishes almost every day.

Dai Meiqin, whose two children are studying in the school, said, "The meals secure the needed nutrition for my kids...and the meals are of good quality."

"The meals help us a lot as the children are in their growth period," said Li Yingxiang, whose children are also studying in this school.

The government has invested 47.2 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) in its rural nutrition program since 2011, and 32.2 million children have reaped the benefits, the Ministry of Education said in 2015.

The program was launched to address malnutrition in rural areas, when it began to allocate three yuan a day to students to supplement their diets with nutritious meals. This was increased to four yuan in November 2014.

The money has been distributed to 134,279 rural schools in 30 out of the Chinese mainland's 31 provincial regions. In addition, another 30 billion yuan has been funneled into building canteens.