Delhi MCD school meals will include oats cookies, fruit, kheer and sambar rice from November as the civic body prepares to introduce a more varied menu across nearly 1,500 municipal schools, officials said on Wednesday.
The new agencies that will operate the school kitchens have been asked to add at least one special item to the regular meal every day. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi said the objective is to make nutritious food more appealing to children and encourage them to eat the full meal.
A senior MCD official said children could lose interest when the same food is served repeatedly. The official said familiar ingredients could be prepared as cookies or in other formats that children would enjoy, while maintaining the nutritional purpose of the school meal.
The revised menu is expected to include sambar rice, while existing dishes such as puri-aloo, dal-rice and chole-rice will continue. Officials also said wheat and ragi halwa would be served twice a week. Other meals planned or continuing across zones include puri-sabzi, dal-chawal, chole-chawal, rajma-chawal and kadhi-chawal.
The MCD has asked the agencies to introduce greater variety in preparation rather than simply remove popular dishes. One official said puri-aloo remained popular among children and that the civic body wanted students to eat all the items on the menu.
The changes coincide with the MCD’s plan to hand over its school kitchens to a new group of agencies. The tender was floated about two months ago, and surveys of shortlisted kitchens are under way. Officials said 13 new vendors are expected to be appointed and that the agencies could be finalised by next week.
The agencies will also have to work within their available kitchen infrastructure while adding the new items. This requirement places the focus not only on menu design but also on whether existing facilities can support different preparation methods and bulk production across the civic body’s schools.
Under the Centre’s PM POSHAN nutrition norms, a school meal at the primary level must provide 450 calories and 12 grams of protein per child per day. The MCD said food supplied by the agencies is checked through five third-party laboratories. Four samples are collected from each agency every month, including three samples from food served to students and one from the kitchen.
The menu revision also follows an earlier decision by the Directorate of Education to introduce idli-sambar in school meals. Schools and agencies had been directed to make arrangements by August 24, but officials said the dish has not yet been introduced because specialised equipment for preparing idlis in bulk requires funds.
The MCD’s next steps are the finalisation of the new agencies, completion of kitchen surveys and implementation of the revised menu from November.
