On December 15th, 2016, Ministry of Education and Training, National Institute of Nutrition – Ministry of Health and Ajinomoto Vietnam Company has organized Conference of Deploying Nutrition-Balanced Menu Development Software for Departments of Education and Training nationwide. The software is developed by Ajinomoto Vietnam Company with the advisory of National Institute of Nutrition – Ministry of Health and the collaboration of Ministry of Education and Training.

The Nutrition-Balanced Menu Development Software has been researched and developed in 3 years, from 2014 to late 2016. The software will be provided for free to all day-boarding primary schools nationwide through the website of School Meal Project: www.buaanhocduong.com.vn from January, 2017. After that, the software’s users will be expanded. The software has outstanding functions as below:

1.   The software supplies a diversified menu bank, includes 120 menus with more than 360 different dishes for lunch which are nutrition-balanced, diversified and tasty, divided into 3 areas: North, Central and South.

2.   The software helps school to build new menus from available dishes in menu bank, creating nutrition-balanced and tasty menus.

3.   Besides, the software supports schools create new menu with optional, local ingredients, check nutrition facts of the menus that are in use.

4.   Furthermore, the software helps calculate and manage expense of the meals.

The software is evaluated to be modern, user-friendly, easy to interact, which brings computerization closer to menu formation process and day-boarding primary school meal management, solve the time problem of deploying School Meal Project synchronously.

In addition to the software, School Meal Project also establishes Food Illustration Poster “3 minutes to change awareness” for day-boarding primary school to educate about foods’ nutrition and benefits for pupils, from that point, encourage pupils to eat variety of food, especially forming healthy vegetable-eating habit.

In Vietnam, most primary schools are initially built for educating. From the parents’ urgent need, the schools undertake to provide school meals, but face many restrictions. Day-boarding staffs are not professionally trained and inexperienced. Therefore, schools encounter problem in making menus that are various, abundant, suitable for primary ages and monthly cost.

Meanwhile, Vietnam is facing many big challenges of nutrition, including the double burden of malnutrition: under-nutrition (especially stunting) is popular in rural area, while overweight/obesity is increasing at fast rate in cities, mostly in big cities. Besides, micronutrient deficiency in children is common in both areas. According to surveys in 6 provinces/cities of National Institute of Nutrition – Ministry of Health in 2011, the ratio of stunting in 6-9 year old children is 27%, in 9-11 year old children is 18.2%. Whereas, national survey in 2009-2010 shows that obesity ratio in children in municipalities has increased to 27.4%. Improving children’s nutritional status through reasonable school meals is one of important contents of National Nutrition Strategy and General Project to develop physique for Vietnamese people in 2011-2030.

Understanding the society’s issues and difficulties of schools, along with the advantages as one of leading companies in nutrition and health, the experiences in building menus, Ajinomoto Vietnam Company has researched and started up School Meal Project in 2012. The purpose of the project is “Implement the responsibility to contribute to education where the future generations are nourished and trained,  by improving pupils’ health through school meals with nutrition-balanced, diversified and delicious menus”.

Within the framework of the project, Ajinomoto Vietnam Company has deployed some main contents: developing Menu Books which are nutrition-balanced, diverse and delicious, suitable for each area through the researching process of Company’s culinary experts; supporting schools in educating foods’ nutrition and benefits to health, thenceforth developing healthy eating-habits by the Illustration tool “3 minutes to change awareness”; building standard Kitchen model for schools to visit, study and apply; and most recent is developing the Nutrition-Balanced Menu Development Software.

To implement these contents successfully, Ajinomoto Vietnam Company has received a lot of close collaborations from leading nutrition organizations in Vietnam, typically National Institute of Nutrition – Ministry of Health. Through recent years, National Institute of Nutrition – Ministry of Health has accompanied Ajinomoto Vietnam Company in researching, surveying pupils’ nutritional status and eating habit, and from that point offering expert advice to develop the Menu Book, Illustration tool and Nutrition-Balanced Menu Development Software that are in accordance with Recommended dietary allowance for Vietnamese people, particularly pupils at primary ages.

In 2012, Ajinomoto Vietnam Company proposed the Project to Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training. Highly appreciate the meaning of the project, leaders of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training gave a big consensus and support to deploy the project in Ho Chi Minh City. Throughout the implementation, leaders of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, Office of Students Affairs, Offices of Primary Education, Offices of Education and Training of districts have commanded schools to apply the project seriously, brought many positive results for both pupils and schools. Besides, the teachers and day-boarding staffs have made great efforts in applying the menu, from preparing the meal to educating pupils about nutrition. Therefore, the project gained remarkable result in Ho Chi Minh City and Ho Chi Minh City is the pioneer in successfully deploying the project, makes the foundation to put the project continues to be replication in other big cities like Da Nang and Hai Phong, with the strong support of these cities’ education and training departments.

With the practical significance and successful initial results in large cities, with the expectation of widely replicate the project through Nutrition-Balanced Menu Development Software, Ajinomoto Vietnam Company has proposed to Ministry of Education and Training.

Realizing the meaning of the project in resolving issues in preparing day-boarding school meals, Ministry of Education and Training researched, assessed the effectiveness of the project. Specifically in 2016, Ministry of Education and Training, accompanied by Ajinomoto Vietnam has surveyed day-boarding schools in 63 provinces/cities. The survey's results in 4,061 schools with 1,428,257 pupils shows that 100% schools agree on the necessity of improving the school meals and training for day-boarding staffs and teachers about nutrition and food hygiene.

Simultaneously, Ministry of Education and Training also held important meetings in order to make deployment plan, gather opinions from province/city departments of education and training and other related organizations. From this foundation and positive results in HCMC, Da Nang and Hai Phong, Ministry of Education and Training decided to accompany with Ajinomoto Vietnam Company and National Institute of Nutrition – Ministry of Health to deploy School Meal Project nationwide through the Nutrition-Balanced Menu Development Software.

Through 25 years operating in Vietnam, Ajinomoto Vietnam Company has carried out many social activities to realize the mission of contributing to the further development of Vietnam, the happiness  good health for people in Vietnam through food culture and food resource development. With School Meal Project, Ajinomoto hopes to get closer to that noble goal, complete our social responsibility.