Akshaya Patra Foundation stresses on food being safe, nutritious, tasty

The Akshaya Patra Foundation which operates on a module that puts hygiene and quality on top of its priorities in food preparation and serving has now gone on to highlight how every meal prepared needs to be completely safe, nutritious and tasty at the same time.

“We also believe that eating is not only for nutrition, it is also for taste. We want children to relish what they eat and hence, we prepare a different dish every day to break the monotony,” said Chanchalapathi Dasa, VC, the Akshaya Patra Foundation. 

“Social awareness and consumer education on food safety will help strengthen the enforcement of food standards, improve hygienic practices and prevent food-borne illnesses. The most relevant of all the measures is creating awareness among people to ensure that their food is safe. Serving children safe, nutritious and hygienic food is our priority to eliminate classroom hunger in India. Our Indian kitchen standards are world-class in terms of ensuring quality and hygiene. With the responsibility of feeding millions of children in India every day, we leave nothing to speculation to ensure safe and nutritious food every time,” he added. 

The practices of food making at the foundation are in sync with the recent World Health Day theme which calls to promote improvement in food safety. 

Its ISO-certified centralised kitchens are equipped to prepare meals for large-scale feeding. A strict kitchen process is observed which includes certain mandatory routines to be followed by each member of the kitchen staff. Food Safety Management Systems are implemented in all the kitchens, be it centralised or decentralised, in order to handle, prepare and deliver food.

All cauldrons, trolleys, rice chutes, dal/sambar tanks, cutting boards, knives and other instruments in these units are sanitised before usage every single day. All vessels used in the kitchens are made of food-safe stainless steel of 304 Grade which retains temperature for long intervals.

The raw materials that are procured are of the best quality and to ensure this robust Supplier Quality Management System (SQMS) is implemented. 

In order to make sure that none of the personal hygiene practises are missed out before the cooking begins, each staff member follows a routine hygiene chart. 

Standardisation of our recipes is an important factor while maintaining high levels of nutrition along with taste.

Ten of the centralised kitchens of the foundation, operational in 24 locations of 10 states, are ISO 22000:2005-certified and the remaining kitchens are in the process of this certification.

Each rice cauldron has a capacity of at least 500 litre; and each dal cauldron has the capacity to cook 1,200 litre to 3,000 litre of dal. The roti-making machines, have a capacity to roll out up to 200,000 rotis from 6,000 kg of wheat flour.

The kitchens are able to properly identify, store and retrieve the raw materials in an appropriate manner.

All the kitchens of Akshaya Patra follow a standard process for preparing the mid-day meals. Specially designed and customised transport vehicles deliver food. These vehicles are steam sterilised before the loading process.