At a wooden stall with a woven leaf roof near Koh Khel Secondary School, freshly made bottles of basil seed, pumpkin, passion fruit and centella juices – along with soy milk and coconut water – stand ready to refresh students on their break.

Unlike the vendors outside many other schools who sell processed foods and canned drinks, Vorn Chanthary, who lives in Koh Khel village, Koh Khel commune, Saang district, Kandal province, sells products which are healthy for the students. She said the idea came from her family.

“My family has always encouraged healthy eating. My aunt and my mom loved the idea of selling fresh, clean food to the children,” she told The Post.

Students begin experimenting with healthy food and drink – thanks to the influence of a teacher who regularly buys snacks of fruit and vegetables from her family.

“The teacher buys pumpkins, oranges and other vegetables from my house. When she teaches, she recommends my healthy food to her students,” said Chanthary.

“At first, when the children came to try the healthy options, they complained that they were not sweet enough and they did not like them. We tell kids not to eat too much sugary food, as it is not good for them. After a while, the students were used to not eating so much sugar, and they no longer missed it,” she added.

Her fresh drink options are sourced depending on the season. Some of the juices are made with produce from Oddar Meanchey and some with produce grown in her own garden.

“At the beginning of the rainy season, we have rich healthy juices including guava and a little passion fruit. The mango season has passed, but when there was an abundance of mangoes, we made sweets – even if they are unripe, we can use them. I also grow dragonfruit at my home,” she explained.

When her family has bananas, she makes steamed rice with bananas and sells them, sometimes keeping some for herself.

“As a family, whenever we have fresh produce, we cook with it. This means that we are generally cooking and selling whatever has most recently been harvested from our fields,” she added.

Freshly bottled drinks are sold to children for only 1,000 riel, while the food stalls sell fried rice, pork or chicken on rice, noodles and curry soup. All of the meals come with a rich variety of vegetables.

“Our prices are very low, but our motivation comes from seeing so many children with poor diets. My family does not think about profit. We make the food we like to share and eat,” she added.

The sale of such food is applauded by the parents of the children who attend the school.

“Our neighbours – an elderly couple who are doctors, and mindful of maintaining a healthy lifestyle – recommend our family’s way of cooking seasonally,” she said.

“It’s not a competition, we just do our best. I think some vendors only care about profit. I hope that they become aware of this issue and think more about the health of their customers,” she added.

In Sampov Loun district, Battambang Province, Vann Sary and Thin Dane transformed their stall into a reading area for students and sell natural juices instead of sugary canned drinks.

“If you love yourself, look after your health. After learning about the health risks associated with food and drinks which are very sweet and contain potentially harmful chemicals, I turned to selling natural drinks instead of ones from cans,” said Dane, a geography and history teacher at Santepheap Secondary School.

She makes pineapple, pumpkin, passion fruit and malva nut juice for her customers, among others.

Her husband, Sary, a member of the school’s IT team, supported the idea, saying: “At first we switched to healthier options because we did not want to harm the children. Then we thought about the long-term benefits of a clean diet. Becoming conscious of what we put into our bodies is an important life skill.”

“That’s why Dane and I stop selling things like meatballs. Basically, we stopped selling things that aren’t nutritious,” he told The Post.

Convincing students to choose healthy foods requires a bit of work, he said, but the fresh juices now sell themselves.

“The taste of canned drinks is very different to our homemade fresh juice. Because we barely add sugar to the fresh fruit, they are less sweet and didn’t at first appeal as much as the very sweet factory drinks,” he added.

“But after taking the time to explain the health benefits of freshly made drinks to the children, more and more of them are choosing natural juices,” he added.

Unfortunately healthy snacks and drinks are not options at the private school that Pich Khemara’s children attend. Her children are each given 5,000 riel a day to buy food and drink at their school. She disapproved of their choices, but said there was no way to make sure they ate healthy food.

“What else can I do when they are at school? They are hungry at break time. I have no choice but to give them money to buy the unhealthy snacks and drinks that are available. It doesn’t help that my children love to eat processed food and sugary drinks,” she said.

In January of 2020, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports campaigned for healthier food options at schools to prevent the sale of overly processed foods and ones that are harmful to the health and development of students.

The ministry banned the sale of expired food, all kinds of alcohol and tobacco, foods without a clear source, energy drinks, coffee, ice-cream, candies and chocolate, and anything with too high of a sugar content.

Minister of Education Hang Chuon Naron spoke about the campaign at the time.

“We have not banned them from eating all sweet foods, but their diets must be balanced. Nothing should be too sweet, salty or fatty. Salty foods elevate blood pressure. Fatty foods lead to weight gain, a leading cause of heart disease. We all know the dangers of too much sugar,” he explained.

Chaktomuk Primary School is considered a model school for the way it maintains hygiene standards and offers only healthy food. School principal So Thy said that the school had worked with all stakeholders and convened meetings with vendors to spread awareness of the dangers of harmful food and drink.

“Despite students’ demands for sugary drinks and snacks, we banned them. We have explained why and told them about the impact of sweet drinks on their health,” he said.

He emphasised the importance of good health, saying he wanted his students to have the strength to become good citizens.

When students are unhealthy, they generally had poor results from their studies. This was another reason for the school to be mindful of their health, he said.

“Food vendors in our cafeteria have to sign contracts with the school at the beginning of the year. If vendors sell foods that do not align with the guidelines issued by the education ministry, their contracts will be cancelled,” he added.