Bianca Paiva
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - All 27 Brazilian states can now count on the Brazil Kitchen Project. The final mobile kitchen-school units were delivered yesterday (15) to the 12 states that had not received them.

"The next stage is for us to obtain new adhesions, more resources, and more trucks, so that needy communities can have access to high quality food," informs the Minister of Social Development and Hunger Alleviation, Patrus Ananias.

The program, which was developed by the Ministry in partnership with the National Council of the Social Service of Industry (Sesi), offers courses in mobile instructional kitchens - mounted on trucks - in which students learn about the composition and integral utilization of foods (including peels, stems, and leaves) and the preparation of inexpensive meals. The objective is to teach the population to eat in a healthy and cheap manner, avoiding waste. The course is directly especially at people responsible for preparing meals in hospitals and schools.

The director of the Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security in the Ministry, Marcos Dal Fabbro, emphasizes that the program is also meant to insert the theme of waste. "By conveying additional information on nutritional education, we are helping families utilize food in an integral fashion," he pointed out.

The president of the Sesi's National Council, Jair Meneguelli, remarked that "it is inadmissible, in a country where hunger exists, for 30% of our food products to go to waste between their harvest and final utilization."

The Brazil Kitchen project has already received over R$ 8.6 million from public and private companies. These donations financed the construction of the 27 kitchen-schools, each at a cost of R$ 180 thousand.

Translation: David Silberstein