This meal is essential to a child's health

According to W NICEF, Japan is a major place for child health, low mortality rates, low overweights, and very few underweight children.

Experts say there are several factors at stake that Japanese pay attention to health, regular medical checkups for children, but especially school lunch.

The school lunch menu is decided by nutrients and meals served in all elementary schools and most high schools in Japan, explains Mitsuhiko Hara, pediatrics and professor at the University of Tokyo.

Lunch at school is mandatory and students are not allowed to bring a snack.

Most of these meals are not free, but they are significantly subsidized. Officials at the Ministry of Health of Japan explain that school lunch compensates for all nutrients that are lacking in the children's diet at home, Kosova Prees broadcasts.

These foods are also significant in educating children, as they are daily informed by school reports of what they have for lunch and why it is good for them. In elementary schools, students must classify what they eat in different categories, learning to distinguish between food types.

Japan's mandatory lunch practice has existed since 1889, when the state distributed balls of rice and fish to children of poor families in northern Yamata Prefecture.

The program later spread throughout Japan, especially after World War II. Along with good eating habits and awareness of the importance of healthy foods, experts also stress that Japan is one of the few countries that pays great attention to the seasons, d.m. thTo consume food at a certain season.

Japan has one of the lowest infant mortality rates, and the number of overweight children between the ages of 5 and 19 is 14.42 percent, which is significantly less than in most other developed countries. According to this criterion, United States tops U list NICEF at 41.86 percent until Italy has a rate of 36.87 percent and France 30.09 percent.

An increase in the number of overweight children is a phenomenon that affects Japan, more often among poor families who, in an effort to lower the cost of eating, serve children with more carbs and fewer proteins.