Big data takes byte out of lunch

Microsoft joins with government to help improve the diet of rural schoolchildren

Millions of rural students in China are receiving free school meals as part of a central government plan to ease poverty.

Technical support for the initiative is being backed by one of the world's biggest companies as it join forces with Beijing to close the health gap between urban and rural school children.

Microsoft Corp, the technology giant with its headquarters in the United States, was involved in building a big data platform to help track the nutritional status of country-based students.

This will monitor the progress of the Nutrition Improvement Plan, which benefits 21.3 million children every day.

"We are processing daily data such as the photos of students' lunch, the recipe, the ingredients for their meals and how the money is spent," said Chen Shi, global vice-president of Microsoft.

Big data is a vital pillar of the information industry, and is used to crunch vast amounts of complex statistics to show patterns and trends in business and consumer habits.

It will help measure the efficiency of the program in which students can enjoy lunches rich in energy and protein.

The plan was officially launched by the State Council in 2011 and now covers 699 poverty-stricken counties in China.

The central government has invested up to 159.1 billion yuan ($23.38 billion) in the project and has since rolled out a big data platform.

The Ministry of Education and the China Development Research Foundation were involved in the initiative, while the technology was based on Microsoft's cloud computing system.

The tech-support program now covers 100 counties in 13 provinces and regions. Data is collected from nearly four million students at more than 9,200 schools.

During the past two years, the platform has gathered and analyzed 10.2 million sets of data on eating habits and spending.

"We hope cutting-edge technology can help ensure that every penny is efficiently spent to facilitate students' healthy growth," said Chen.

Microsoft also uses "visualization technology" to present and process data in a clear way.

This can help provide even greater insight into designing nutritious meals to keep students healthy.

"The average height of students across all age groups has increased because of the Nutrition Improvement Plan," said Lu Mai, vice-chairman and secretary-general of the China Development Research Foundation.

"That particularly applies to children receiving school meals for the past three or four years or are aged between 11 to 15," Lu added. "The average height of students has increased by more than five centimeters."

Vice-Premier Liu Yandong has praised the program and stressed that improving the diet for students is crucial to help teenagers stay healthy.

Malnutrition problems still exist in poverty stricken regions of the country. But the rates among students in rural areas has dramatically fallen from 18.5 percent in 2012 to 15.4 percent in 2016 because of the government-backed program.

"It is also an important part of the poverty alleviation work," said Li Wei, minister of the Development Research Center of the State Council. "More than 33 million students have benefited since the implementation of the Nutrition Improvement Plan.

"Children's nutritional status is an important indicator to evaluate a nation's economic and social development," added Li.

Contact the writers at zhengyiran@chinadaily.com.cn and masi@chinadaily.com.cn