Nutrition education falls short / Number of specialized te.

Nutrition education falls short / Number of specialized teachers varies widely among prefectures

Yomiuri

The number of nutrition teachers, who are seen as the core of the nation's dietary education, vary drastically between prefectures.

Although five years have passed since the introduction of the nutrition teacher program, as of April, there were large differences in the number of teachers working in different prefectures. For example, while there were 385 nutrition teachers in Osaka Prefecture, 362 in Hokkaido and 322 in Hyogo Prefecture, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures--which have more students--had only 38 and 40 nutrition teachers, respectively. Tokyo, with 1,940 public primary and middle schools, had only 27.

School officials in charge of the …