A At the Msekeni Primary School in Malawi, children are gathered under the shade of yellow-blossomed acacia trees for their lessons. There are not enough classrooms for every class at the school, but even so, one purpose-built classroom has been emptied and turned into a storeroom for sacks of grain. Here in Malawi, it is clear that food matters more than shelter.
B Malawi is a landlocked southern African country of great beauty and even greater poverty, and Msekeni is one of its poorer regions. Malawians are fortunate not to be experiencing the problems of war or overcrowding or infertile ground, but still they have trouble finding enough food to eat. 7Half of the children under five years of age are underfed to the point of stunting their growth. 1Hunger affects most aspects of Malawian life, so the country is an excellent subject for research into how nutrition and development are intertwined.
C Bernard Kumanda is the headmaster at the Msekeni school, and he has strong views on the topic. 2Kumanda stated that food is essential to learning, and since 1999 his students have been receiving free school lunches of grain made up of mixed maize and soybean flour, enriched with vitamin A, which is donated through the World Food Program. 8Local volunteers do the cooking, turning the dry grain into a bland yet nutritious porridge to be spooned out onto plastic plates. The children eagerly line up for their share, often singing a cheerful song they call “We are getting porridge”.
D 3-9Interestingly, the enrolment of students at the Msekeni school doubled when the school's food program was introduced. A number of pupils transferred from other nearby schools, but most new enrolments were children whose families had previously kept them at home to work. These families were so poor that the long-term benefits of educating their children paled against the short-term gain of sending their children out to work in the fields or to gather firewood. The offer of one plate of porridge a day at school completely altered the situation. 10On average, when a school in Malawi starts providing free food, there is a 38% rise in the attendance of girls and 24% in boys. A child receiving food at school will not cry so plaintively for food at home. As an extra incentive, girls, who are more likely than boys to be kept at home, are even given extra snacks to take home.
E You would expect that a school suddenly taking on significantly more students from poor homes would see a decrease in pass marks, because in most parts of the world, students from poor homes tend to perform worse than those from more prosperous backgrounds. 4Combining the influx of students in Msekeni with no increase in teacher numbers, you would expect the pass rates to fall even further. However, in the case at Msekeni, the opposite has proved true. Pass rates have actually improved from 30% to 85%. Although this is a particularly dramatic example of rises in pass rates, national data shows that the results of school food programs are good overall. While the pass rates for boys tend to remain the same, the rates for girls increase 9.5%. The fact that the effect of feeding is more pronounced in girls than in boys gives a clue to who is eating first in Malawian households-it isn’t the girls.
F 5-14Better nutrition generally means brighter children. 11Almost immediately, well-fed children find it easier to concentrate on their lessons - it can be well imagined what would happen to a child if his stomach is always crying out for food. “It would be easy to identify children who were critically undernourished. They were the ones who stared into space and didn’t respond when you asked them questions, ”Kumanda says. Even more importantly though, sufficient nutritious food helps young brains grow and develop. 12Like all organs, the brain needs both exercise and nutrition. Lacking necessary calories, protein and micronutrients, its growth will be stunted, just like the growth of muscles. This is why feeding children at school makes such a dramatic impact.
G Three hundred years ago, chronic malnutrition was more or less a worldwide problem. 6However, now, on a global scale, people are eating better than ever before. Humans grow to around 50% larger than before the industrial revolution, and malnutrition is extremely rare in rich countries. Even in developing countries, where the majority of Earth's population lives, plates and bowls are fuller than ever before. The percentage of children under the age of five in developing countries who are malnourished fell from 39% in 1990 to 30% in 2000, according to the World Health Organization. In other places too, the fight against hunger appears to be quite successful. Better nutrition has the effect of making people smarter and more energetic, which in turn helps them to grow more prosperous. 13And ironically, going from poor to well-off, people suddenly start to worry about becoming obese.
