# Ready‐to‐Use School Meals in Northern Ghana Are a Viable Alternative to Traditional School Meals

## TL;DR

Ready-to-use school meals in northern Ghana offer a reliable and safe alternative to traditional meals without increasing costs.

## Contribution

The study demonstrates the viability of ready-to-use meals in improving school feeding reliability in resource-limited settings.

## Key findings

- Ready-to-use meals and home-grown meals had similar costs and nutrient content.
- Ready-to-use meals allowed for safer and more efficient food preparation and distribution.
- Community engagement was crucial but could lead to disruptions if not properly managed.

## Abstract

School feeding provides nutrition, brings order to the school day, and enhances student participation. School feeding in low‐income countries is often sporadic due to coordination challenges among multiple stakeholders. To assess the reliability of school feeding in Mion district, a food‐insecure area in northern Ghana, Project Peanut Butter (PPB) studied ready‐to‐use school meals (RUSMs) and micronutrient‐fortified home‐grown school food (HGSF). The school meals were initially provided daily in elementary schools and then extended to junior high schools. The key elements of functional programming were qualitatively compared: costs, ingredient and nutrient content, food preparation, food distribution, and consumer engagement. The cost of ingredients and nutrient content were similar between RUSM and HGSF. Safe and efficient food preparation, distribution, and storage were more readily achieved by RUSM. Consumer engagement is essential for acceptance, but can pose a challenge and disruption contingent upon the degree of ownership the community asserts over food rations. This was seen when pre‐school age children were sent to collect food rations from the elementary schools in numbers that exceeded the student enrollment. Overall, the use of a RUSM in a resource‐constrained setting allowed for greater safety and reliability of school meals at a similar cost.

School feeding improves nutrition and attendance but faces coordination challenges in low‐income areas. In Ghana's Mion district, PPB compared RUSMs and HGSF. Both had similar costs and nutrients, but RUSMs ensured safer preparation and distribution. Community engagement was vital but sometimes disruptive, as seen when extra children collected rations. RUSMs proved more reliable in resource‐limited settings at comparable costs.