Jakarta, hitclubapk3 Indonesia
—
Coordinating Minister for Food
Zulkifli Hasan
ensure existence
nutritionist
remains a mandatory component in the implementation of the Free Nutritious Meal program (
MBG
).
He emphasized this after holding a meeting with nutrition experts who are members of the Indonesian Nutritionists Association (Persagi) responding to public debate regarding the status of this profession in the national program.
“One, MBG remains and must, is mandatory, needs (to have) a professional nutritionist in its implementation. It needs a nutritionist, because it has to be measured later. I repeat again, MBG needs a professional nutritionist in implementing the process,” said the man who is familiarly called Zulhas at a press conference at the Coordinating Ministry for Food, Central Jakarta, Wednesday (19/11).
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Zulhas explained that the role of nutritionists cannot be separated from the aim of the MBG program which targets improving the quality of human resources (HR).Adequate nutrition determines a child’s physical development and intelligence.
“This is an important theme for us to discuss, because the keyword is that our country can progress depending on its human resources, human resources are people, whether people will be great or not depends on their intake,” he said.
He added that the results of the MBG program are planned to be evaluated periodically.
“Intake makes us smart, strong or not depending on nutrition. Talking about nutrition, these are the experts, so it is very important to determine MBG, because later it will be measured, it will be measured in six months if you have been given nutritious food, its growth rate, physique, IQ and so on will be measured,” he said.
Apart from ensuring the mandatory involvement of nutritionists, Zulhas also invited professionals in this field to help monitor public consumption, especially children.According to him, the habit of consuming foods and drinks high in sugar is now increasingly widespread.
“We invited nutrition experts to monitor food everywhere. We discussed earlier, now in Indonesia there are a lot of people who suffer from diabetes, or high sugar, even children,” he said.
He also asked for nutrition education to be expanded, both in the school environment and SPPG as the MBG implementing kitchen.
“Inviting nutritionists to educate our children about foods that are suitable for our children, good for consumption and which ones need to be avoided, including those that are high in sugar,” said Zulhas.
Zulhas also highlighted the need to strengthen education regarding food safety, especially in school environments and MBG organizing kitchens.He said that Persagi has a role in helping to provide understanding to children and the community about food that is safe and suitable for consumption to avoid poisoning.
According to Zulhas, this effort is carried out in two directions, namely continuous improvement in the internal MBG program and increasing public literacy regarding nutrition and food safety.
The polemic regarding the status of nutritionists in the MBG program emerged after the statement by the Deputy Chairman of the Indonesian House of Representatives, Cucun Ahmad Syamsurizal, who said that the program did not require nutritionists, but rather nutrition supervisors with high school education who received three months of training.
The discourse on changing the term nutritionist sparked criticism until finally Cucun apologized and emphasized that the nutritionist profession would still be optimized in the MBG program.
Head of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN) Dadan Hindayana then explained that SPPG should ideally be filled with nutrition graduates, but the number is currently insufficient.
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(del/pta)
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