e feeding programme discussed above have adopted a scheme whereby they provide a midday meal throughout the school year at a relatively low cost, with the same objectives as the school feeding programme. The meal is also provided to save time for class and to provide recreation time during lunch hour and also due to the fact that some mothers are not available to prepare lunch for their children. The meal is prepared from locally produced foods and is intended to make up for possible imbalances in the childrens' daily diet. The programme is referred to as the School Lunch Programme (SLP).
Vihiga District experiences food shortages almost throughout the year due to small farm sizes and high population density. Compassion International (a Non-governmental Organization) initially supported the school-feeding programme, but withdrew due to financial constraints. A scrutiny of the academic performance, enrollment and attendance records revealed that there was significant improvement in schools that were supported as compared to those that were not. A number of schools have since adopted the system whereby a midday meal is provided for pupils. Parents contribute some money to cater for this. However, there has been no evaluation of these SLP to show their effect on nutritional status of school children. School Feeding Programmes have been established in many countries .
Area of study
Emuhaya Division is located on the leeward side of the Maragoli hills. It therefore receives low amounts of rainfall, a factor likely to negatively affect food production in the area. Temperatures in the Division range from 14oC to 32oC. It has a population of 101, 196 people in an area of 169.5 square km. The population density is approximately 1091 persons per square km. The average family size is 8 persons while the mean farm size is slightly less than 0.6 ha or 1.5 acres. The Division has 4 locations namely Wekhomo, North Bunyore, East Bunyore and North East Bunyore . The division was chosen as the study site because it experiences food shortages due to limited land, a factor likely to jeopardize food intake and hence nutritional status of school children.Study population
The study sample comprised of class five and six pupils from public schools. These classes were chosen because the pupils were likely to have participated in the lunch programme for at least two years, since most children start participating in the programme at class three. It was assumed that a minimum of two years' participation in the programme would be adequate to demonstrate the impact of the programme on the nutritional status of the children.
Sample size and Sampling Procedures
A sample size of 320 pupils (160 participants and 160 non-participants) was randomly selected for the study according to the formula suggested by Fisher et al.  for comparative studies. This study adopted a cross-sectional survey design. This incorporated both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Schools with SLP were identified using records at the Emuhaya Division education offices. According to the records, sixteen schools in the Division had the SLP while thirty seven did not. To obtain the study sample, eight schools were randomly picked from schools with SLP. Since Emuhaya Division has four locations, two schools were randomly selected from each location. To do this, schools with the SLP in each location were listed and two schools selected from each location using simple random sampling.
To obtain the pupils' sample in each school, teachers provided standard 5 and 6 lists of pupils to constitute the sampling frame. The study pupils were then selected using stratified random sampling. The strata for this population were obtained by grouping the population into two; participants and non-participants in the SLP. Ten pupils were then randomly selected in each group to obtain 20 pupils per class. This gave 40 pupils per school and a total sample of 320 pupils for the eight schools. One parent of each index child was selected to provide data on socio-economic characteristics of the