nd weight-for-height) implies that the SLP has an effect on nutritional status of school children in Emuhaya Division. It leads to the acceptance of the hypothesis that nutritional status of participants is better than that of the non-participants.
The large number of non-participants who were underweight as compared to participants is consistent with the findings of Hijazi and Abdulatif  in Jordan, where the weights of children participating in the lunch programme were significantly and generally higher the non-participants. The significant association between school lunch and weight-for-age indicates that the school lunch contributes towards better nutritional status of the participants. This supports the hypothesis that nutritional status of participants as determined by weightfor-age is better than that of the non-participants. The lower prevalence of underweight as compared to that of stunting correlates well with the ACC/SCN  report where underweight, due to chronic under nutrition or wasting was found to affect fewer children globally than stunting.
The prevalence of stunting among the non-participants was higher than the national rate. Findings of Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS)  revealed that stunting, a feature of chronic under nutrition, is the most prevalent presentation of malnutrition with a current national rate of 33%. Similarly, ACC/SCN  reported that an estimated 32.5% of children in developing countries are stunted. Thus, the prevalence in the area of study indicates a need for intervention. In his research agenda of 2005, Corvina  also agrees that there's need to develop interventions to confront undernutrition.
The significantly higher levels of stunting among the non-participants in the area of study as compared to the participants indicates that the school lunch may have played a big role in reducing levels of stunting among participants. Since stunting is a long-term deficit, this implies that non-participants could have suffered food deprivation for a long time. Participation in the school lunch could thus reduce levels of stunting among them.
In his Samburu study, Kielmann  obtained similar results where high levels of stunting were recorded among school children aged five to fifteen years. A study carried out by Sigman et al.  in Embu District, Kenya, on school children aged seven to nine years also showed that 25% of the sample was stunted. Consequently a large study of anthropometric status of rural school children conducted in low-income countries of Africa found an overall prevalence of 34% to 62% for stunting . A study in Brazil of the gender differences in growth of school children suffering from helminthes infections found that 21% of the children were stunted . Kimati  reported similar results in Tanzania.
The higher prevalence of stunting as compared to that of underweight is in line with the ACC/SCN report  of 2000 where the prevalence of stunting (39.4%) in sub-Saharan Africa was higher than that of underweight which was 27.9%. It was on average 11.5% points higher than the prevalence of underweight. The association between height-for-age and the school lunch did not reach statistical significance unlike the association between the school lunch and both weight-for-age and weight-for-height. This may be explained by the fact that children who are stunted in early life may attain normal weight later but remain short.
Only 5% of the participants were wasted as compared to 18.2% of the non-participants. These results compare well with those of Kielmann's Samburu study , which also showed high prevalence of wasting among school children aged five to fifteen years. The prevalence of wasting however was not as alarming as that of stunting. This is consistent with the FAO/WHO findings  where, inferences drawn from the national nutrition surveys seem to suggest that, nutritional wasting or acute malnutrition affects only a small proportion of the child population, although nutritional stunting or chronic malnutrition is fairly prevalent in the country.
The high levels of wasting among 