This time it was TV Pink to interview BSN’s Ratko Bojović for the 6 am Daybreak programmebroadcast on 1st November. Although the stimulus for the interview was the food poisoning outbreak in several Belgrade schools reported in October, this time word had evidently got around that there is a major project in Serbia that is doing something to improve school meals. Thus, the focus of the interview was mainly to find out what Strength2Food is doing in Serbia and how it aims to help improve meals in Serbia’s primary schools. Ratko was able to describe howthe teams in Serbia aim not only to improve the current school menus, but also to help schools modify criteria for food procurement to improve food quality and encourage more locally-grown food to be bought. He reported that around 30% of food items in one of Novi Sad’s primary schools was found to be imported and announced thatStrength2Food’s partner BARILLA, with expertise in meal nutritional quality, will be visiting several primary schools in Serbia later this month. Theywill meet cooks and see their kitchen facilities as a prerequisite to develop
new menus that will take account of Serbia’s traditional eating habits and children’s preferences. To support these activities, the project is preparing educational resources in Serbian on a new website for different stakeholder groups – schoolteachers, cooks, children and their parents.
Belgrade
2 Nov 2017