VIJAYAWADA: With an objective to promote safe, healthy and sustainable food on campuses such as schools, universities, colleges, workplaces as well as hospitals, the officials of the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) have started an exercise ‘Eat Right Campus‘ in Vijayawada.
As a part of the initiation, FSSAI officials selected two colleges in the city to educate the canteen organisers on the need of supplying quality food to the students. The decision was reportedly taken after the FSSAI officials found most of the canteens operating in educational institutions were running their businesses without any necessary licences from the department concerned.
“After many canteens offering services to students in the educational institutions were found to have been running sans FSSAI licence, we served notices to the organisers to comply with FSSAI rules and regulations. However, none of them approached us seeking an FSSAI licence.
In order to ensure students consume nutritious food in the college canteens, we have decided to certify some colleges as ‘Eat Right Campuses’ as part of the FSSAI initiative. In a first step, we are in talks with VR Siddhartha Engineering College and another college to transform the canteens in their vicinity to get certified as Eat Right Campus,” said a senior official from FSSAI.
Eat Right India is a flagship mission of FSSAI, which aims at ensuring that the citizens of the country get safe and nutritious food. The ‘Eat Right Campus’ initiative mainly focuses on promoting safe, healthy and sustainable food in campuses such as schools, universities, colleges, workplaces, hospitals, tea estates and other public places across the country. “The objective of Eat Right Campus is to improve the health of people and promote the socio-economic development of the nation. However, certain initiatives are not mandatory to adopt but are advisable as it will help the students to get quality and hygienic food,” the official added.
The official said that a mandatory inspection will be carried out by the food safety inspectors in the canteen to ensure four parameters such as licensing as well as registration of food service providers in the campus, compliance to food safety and hygiene standards as per schedule-4 of the Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act, 2006 and building inspection.
“The Eat Right India is based on three key areas —Eat Safe, Eat Healthily and Eat Sustainably. Not just about being healthy, it provides other benefits economically. Eating nutritious and healthy food reduces the incidents of food-borne, deficiency and non-communicable diseases among the students,” the FSSAI officials elaborated.
“This helps in less absenteeism in students and loss of working hours among employees, greater wellbeing, motivation, and productivity of people,” the FSSAI officials said. The food safety officials further said more colleges will be brought under the Eat Right Campus initiative under the second phase.