The homegrown product is the healthy and nutritional food for the mid-day school meal program: A study of marginal communities in Nepal

The National School Meal Program is the second largest education program in Nepal. This program manages the food requirement, and supports the health and nutrition of primary level students. This study analyzes the ongoing meal program status in the public schools and its role in the health and nutrition of students. The Chitwan and Makwanpur districts were purposively selected for this study. The Manahari and Kalika Local Government selected to analyze the impact of marginal from the health and nutrition perspectives. The study was conducted during Jan- Feb 2025 and a cross sectional design was applied with mixed-method approach.

The finding shows that the National Mid-Day School meal program helps public schools to feed the students, increases in learning, is beneficial to the marginal people below the poverty level supports health and nutrition. In ethnic communities, diverse and local cooked meal helps reduce hunger. Foods like beans, nuts, eggs, milk and local vegetables are nutritionally rich and useful, produced by the local efforts. Seasonal market procured foods are cooked and serve hot at midday. The study concluded as meal program helps marginal people to manage hunger during daytime considered the best practice in remote rural areas where the majority of marginal like Chepang and Tamang. Dalit and others are high. Monitoring mechanisms, local resource availability, and uses are advised more to sustain the local production, the local economy enhancement could be the best sustainable approach through these programs in present and future