FAO recommends that children must be given a snack in the mid-morning to keep their energy up for play and study.
In a country like the Philippines, however, having three meals a day and snacks in between is more of an aspiration than a reality for many school children. A study released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in December 2023 would attest to this.
The OECD study noted that all countries where at least a quarter of students reported not eating at least once a week due to lack of money are among the lowest-performing countries or economies in mathematics in PISA 2022 . The Philippines is one of the countries that recorded an average performance of below 400 points in mathematics. The country’s PISA 2022 score in mathematics was 355, lower than Thailand’s 394.