Abstract

This abstract is a summative analysis of the qualitative data gathered during a field survey based on the interviews from five different ECD centers in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) collected from parents and guardians who sent their children to these centers. Notably, the interviews were open-ended questions aimed at allowing an interactive session for participants to give as brief or lengthy answer as they wanted to explain their perceptions about the preschool lunchboxes. The abstract has identified a series of patterns that are problematic within the ECD centers sampled, which may be used to make general conclusions across ECD centers in lower-class and middle-class regions of NMB metropolis. The findings show that a majority of parents are likely to pack food for their children only because they can afford it, the child likes it, it’s a school requirement or they have little time to pack anything else, and not because it is the healthy choice for the child. Additionally, a lot of parents are likely to be ignorant of what a healthy food is, while they can easily tell what a healthy child should look like. Lastly, while parents are aware of that their children eat at school, a large number of them lack any clue as to what food the school provides and whether it is healthy. Ensuring that children grow and develop well through nutrition would therefore require increasing awareness among the parents with respect to the value of food provided in children’s lunchboxes.

Keywords: Early childhood development center; Malnutrition; Focus group discussions; Lunch boxes; Parent programs