The Institute of Contemporary Development (INSOR) held a roundtable on “The School Food Industry: A business and a path to a healthy nation”. The discussion was led by INSOR Management Board Member and the head of the Center for Social Policy Evgeny Gontmakher.
 
Participants of the roundtable included INSOR chairman Igor Yurgens; Elena Astrakhantseva, representative of the Presidential Administration; Lev Mogilevsky, initiator of a major program for provision of healthy food at Russia’s educational institutes; and many other doctors, academics and nutrition experts.
 
The roundtable discussion focused on a program proposed by Mr. Mogilevsky called “The Creation and Development of the Industry of Provision of Healthy Food for Children at Preschools, Schools, Vocational Schools, Specialized and Higher Institutes of Education”. The program prescribes a free food for school children, the creation of a children’s food industry (from production to delivery), stimulus packages for companies producing food for schools, etc. Mogilevsky suggests launching pilot projects that can then be launched in other places.
 
Elena Astrakhantseva of the Presidential Administration noted that in 2007 an experimental school food program was included in the national project “Education”. Fourteen regions were selected for trial implementation of this program. In each of these regions programs have been adopted for improving school food as a part of public-private private partnerships. “Using the funds of investors, factories are being created to produce ready-made foods. In each of these regions functioning logistics systems are being set up,” Astrakhantseva said. She also said that the government is allocating significant funds for the modernization of school food. Experimental food program is aimed at determining how best to send these funds and to select the optimal approach for each region.
 
According to Professor I. Kon of the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Science, it would be feasible to not completely change the experimental program that is already underway for the program suggested by Mogilevsky, but rather to adopt certain elements of the latter. “This is after all an experiment, and thus it possible to introduce new suggestions from which the best will then be selected,” Kon said.
 
Summing up the discussion, INSOR Chairman Igor Yurgens said that all such discussions at the Institute of Contemporary Development are important: “The government listens to us, so everything that you have said here today will not be lost.”