I. Metshin: "No difficulties should influence the balanced, healthy diet of children"

(Kazan City KZN.RU, November 30, Ksenia Shvetsova). Pupils of the kindergartens and schools of Kazan must to be provided with a balanced diet with all the rules. Mayor Ilsur Metshin gave such an order today at the Business Monday.

The issues of catering in schools and kindergartens of Kazan were one of the topics of discussion at today's staff meeting. "Today we have achieved a lot of progress: more than 90% of school students receive a hot meal, gastrointestinal disease among children reduced 2 times. We worked for these indicators, because children are our future - said I. Metshin. - Despite the complexity of the budget, we will continue to feed the children from socially vulnerable families free. Our motto is: children can learn in different ways, but they have to eat equally well even in the schools".

As the director of MUE "Department of food and social supply of Kazan" Guzel Ananieva told, to date the agency provides food supply of 500 institutions in the city a total of more than 178 thousand people a day.

One of the main activities of the company is the organization of nutrition in kindergartens. The department provides food supply more than 64 thousand children of preschool age. Inspections are carrying out regularly in kindergartens.

During the discussion of the topic of food supply it was also noted that the implementation of the program for the organization of dairy dishes will be continued in Kazan. Today, according to I. Metshin, Kazan remains the only metropolis in Russia, where children receive a healthy dairy food. "We are able to provide Kazan with million populations with baby milk food without any impurities. The number of sales of products from natural milk, compared with 2013 year, increased by 80%, compared to the previous year - by 20%. This suggests that people are moving away from the plastic sausages and fries to a healthy diet. People will “vote” for it by their wallet. Healthy children are the future healthy adult population of the city, "- concluded I. Metshin.

From 1 January 2016 experts plan to pay special attention to compliance of the single menu, but not all preschool and school education institutes will be able to afford it because of outdated technical base. Therefore, as G.Ananeva noted, today there is an urgent need to upgrade and retrofit equipment of kitchens of schools and kindergartens. She also noted that during the formation of the new rules the tastes and wishes of the parents of pupils of kindergartens are taken into account.

Speaking about the sphere of ​​school meals, which is characterized by high organization, Guzel Ananieva said that today the department serves 166 schools with more than 109 thousand people. The main criterion of the department is the coverage with hot meals, which now is 92.7%. The cost of a lunch in the capital of Tatarstan for school students is 49 rubles, a breakfast - 19 rubles. By the way, this is the lowest cost of school lunches of all the megacities today. At the same time director of the department complained that now it is difficult to comply with the requirements of compliance of daily diet by Russian consumer supervision.

Also the emergence of a problem with the possible difficulties with the supply of fruit in schools and kindergartens due to difficult external relations with a number of states was announced at the meeting. Kazan Mayor instructed to prevent the lack of fresh fruits in the menu and to build relationships with other suppliers. Ilsur Metshin stressed that no difficulties should affect the balanced, healthy children's menu.

"We already had a problem with the lack of fruits, with their replacement by compotes and juices. But we must remember that nothing is more expensive than the health of children, so we have to get the clear order about this issue - said the Mayor. - The season may be difficult, providers will change because of the known of events, but we must be prepared for this. Children should receive all the necessary vitamins".

The issue of expanding the list of potential suppliers of food, as well as other issues of organization of social food supply, representatives of all concerned agencies will discuss at a meeting led by the Mayor. Meeting on behalf of the Mayor will be held in the coming days with a visit to the Department of food and social supply.