Hong Kong begins promotion for healthy school meals

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The government of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) has launched a series of promotions for healthy school meals, including an online vote that started on Monday for a competition to design a poster for low-salt and -sugar foods.

"Members of the public are invited to vote online for the Most Liked Award among the poster design entries of the Smart Choices for Low-Salt and Low-Sugar Slogan Writing and Poster Design Competition," the Hong Kong SAR government said in a news release.

A total of 357 students from 75 schools took part in the poster design competition, it said, adding that participants were required to express ideas for reducing the amount of salt and sugar in their dietary intake or learning how to do so through the correct use of nutrition labels.

File photo of vegetables. /Photo via sohu.com

The Department of Health of the SAR government also launched the Salt Reduction Scheme for School Lunches in 440 primary schools at the start of this academic year's fall semester.

Under the scheme, 13 food suppliers will offer 280 reduced-salt lunch options to the involved primary schools, with an average sodium reduction of 9 percent.

Anne Fung, assistant director of the Department of Health, said she hopes the scheme will gradually lower the sodium level of school lunches by up to 10 percent each year, with the 10-year target of the average sodium level in primary school lunchboxes being less than 500 milligrams.

File photo of vegetables. /Photo via Baidu‍

Excessive intake of sodium can cause hypertension, a major cause of cardiovascular diseases and strokes, Fung said, adding that "the rate of referral of primary and secondary students with suspected hypertension for further management increased from 0.4 percent in 2011-2012 to 0.8 percent in 2015-2016."

"Such statistics show it is important to support our children in developing healthy eating habits and to prevent the development of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension," she said.

She added that the department and the Center for Food Safety will launch a scheme testing the nutrients of school lunches next year and collect random lunch samples from all local primary schools in order to examine their levels of energy, sodium and other nutrients.

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Source(s): Xinhua News Agency