Mid-day meals result in better health for next generation, says study

Lower stunting among children with mothers who had access to free school lunches, shows data from 1993-2016

Girls who had access to the free lunches provided at government schools, had children with a higher height-to-age ratio than those who did not, says a new study on the inter-generational benefits of India’s mid-day meal scheme published in Nature Communications this week. Using nationally representative data on cohorts of mothers and their children spanning 23 years, the paper showed that by 2016, the prevalence of stunting was significantly lower in areas where the mid scheme was implemented in 2005.