## (c) Collaboration/coordination of guidance on diet

As mentioned above, school guidance on diet spans a broad range of subjects. For that reason, teachers and other personnel concerned must collaborate and cooperate adequately to provide effective guidance. The diet and nutrition teacher is expected to serve as a cornerstone of collaboration and cooperation between teachers and other staff, playing a central role in the design of comprehensive plans for guidance on diet. Broad collaboration with families and communities in guidance on diet is important, and it is crucial that the diet and nutrition teacher exercise his/her expertise in playing an active role in educational activities through school lunch newsletters, advice to parents and guardians on strategies for meal menus that avoid food product allergens, parent-child cooking classes, and planning of diet-related events hosted by the local community and related organizations. Diet and nutrition teachers thus play an important role as coordinators in effectively promoting food education, ensuring close collaboration between teachers and other staff, parents and guardians and other relevant organizations in activities both in and out of school.

Besides guidance on diet, other important duties of diet and nutrition teachers involving school meal management include nutrition management, sanitation control, food inspection, and commodity management.

By providing guidance on diet and management of school meals as part of their principal duties, for example, diet and nutrition teachers can utilize produce grown in experiential learning or in the local community in school meals to help children gain a realization of the connection between production activities and their day-to-day meals; these efforts can be expected to prove highly synergistic with education.

## 2 ) Training diet and nutrition teachers

As described above, diet and nutrition teachers require expertise in both nutrition and teaching to fulfill their professional duties. A diet and nutrition teacher license system was thus established to systemically guarantee these qualifications/skills; only persons having this license may serve as diet and nutrition teachers.

Three classes of license are available for diet and nutrition teachers—Specialist, Class 1, and Class 2—and applicants must, like teachers and special education instructors, pass a prescribed number of classes/credits at a university to obtain a license.

The basic prerequisite for obtaining a Class 1 license, the standard license, is a bachelor's degree, certification as a national registered dietician, or completion of a national registered dietician training course (a dietician license is required). In addition, four credits in “education courses on nutrition” and 18 credits in “courses on teaching responsibilities” (courses on the significance of teaching responsibilities, basic education theory, curricula, student guidance and educational counseling, general training, and practical training in nutrition education) must be obtained from a university approved by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

A system has also been established to allow persons currently working as a school nutritionist to obtain a diet and nutrition teacher license through a teaching proficiency test offered by prefectural boards of education by satisfying the prescribed years of experience as a school nutritionist and obtaining the necessary university credits.

## 3 ) Assignment of diet and nutrition teachers

Diet and nutrition teachers are assigned at the discretion of local governments and, with the start of the new system in April 2005, prefectural boards of education will hire and assign persons holding diet and nutrition teacher licenses as diet and nutrition teachers at public elementary and junior high schools in accordance with the needs of communities.

## (2) Improvements to Meal Content and Dining Environment

## 1 ) School lunch programs at present

School lunch programs contribute to the formation of correct eating habits by providing nutritionally bal-