e 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 the non-participants may be linked to food shortages in the area of study. ACC/SCN  reported similar observations that wasting is not as common as stunting and underweight among school-aged children in developing countries. Nevertheless, wasting rates can change rapidly in situations of acute food crisis, with school-aged children becoming severely malnourished in such situations .
The effect of the feeding programme is evident from the observation that the wasting prevalence was significantly higher among non-participants than participants. In fact, more than three times non-participants were wasted than participants. Nevertheless the association between the school lunch and weight-for-height was significant. This supports the hypothesis that the nutritional status of the participants is better than that of the non-participants as determined by weight-for-height.
This could be due to the significantly higher amounts of nutrients taken at lunch by participants as compared to the non-participants. This is true because children in both groups took an almost similar amount of nutrients at home during breakfast and supper. It may therefore suggest that the higher lunch calorie and protein intake placed the participants at a greater advantage nutritionally than the non-participants. This concurs with the FAO/WHO report  that SFP should be geared towards improving the nutritional status of school children.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The prevalence of malnutrition as determined by weight-for-age, height-for-age and weightfor-height was significantly higher among the non-participants than the participants. The school lunch provided more calories and proteins to participating children than that provided by the home lunch to non-participants. There was a significant association between the school lunch and nutritional status. The SLP in Emuhaya division, Vihiga District therefore plays a vital role in improving the nutritional status of participating children and thus should continue to be part of the school programme