Smart Monitoring of School Nutrition: An IoTEnabled Approach to Evaluating The Free Nutritious Meal Program

This study designed and piloted an IoT-enabled monitoring framework for school nutrition programs. The system incorporated temperature, ‎humidity, and food weight sensors, with RFID tracking for logistics and cloud-based dashboards for analysis. Evaluation indicators ‎included compliance with national nutrition guidelines, distribution timeliness, food safety parameters, and stakeholder feedback. Pilot ‎deployment demonstrated that the IoT framework enhanced monitoring accuracy, reduced food wastage, and ensured greater adherence to ‎nutritional standards. Data from sensors enabled early detection of temperature deviations and logistic delays, while dashboards facilitated ‎evidence-based decisions by administrators. Preliminary outcomes also suggested improved student attendance and satisfaction due to more ‎reliable meal provision. IoT-enabled intelligent monitoring provides a scalable and transparent solution for evaluating a free nutritious meal ‎program. This approach supports national policy objectives by strengthening accountability, improving service delivery, and generating ‎actionable insights, and contributes to better child health and education outcomes. Future research should expand deployment at scale and ‎integrate predictive analytics to optimize program management further.