Every 15 seconds a child dies of hunger, says a campaign by charities urging G8 leaders to pledge more aid for the world’s poorest families – or every 10 seconds, according to the latest version of the slogan. But does this paint an accurate picture?

There is enough food for everyone, but not everyone has enough food, says the Enough Food for Everyone If campaign.

“In every minute of every day, four children die of hunger,” intones the comedian Eddie Izzard in one of If’s promotional videos, before the 15-second figure was updated to 10 seconds on 6 June.

The stat is a variation on another, used seven years ago in the Make Poverty History campaign – when a host of celebrities from the world of music, cinema and fashion appeared on a video clicking their fingers at regular intervals. Then the message was that a child dies unnecessarily as a result of extreme poverty every three seconds.

Stats about deaths occurring every few seconds have been around for years.

This latest, the 10-second one, is based on a figure from a very reputable source – The Lancet, an internationally renowned journal which recently published a paper saying that more than three million children died of undernutrition in 2011.

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A new global study featuring India among other nations has apprehended that malnourished children fared poorly at studies.

This study has huge bearing for India as about 40 per cent of its children are malnourished.

The Save the Children’s ‘Food for Thought2013’ report found that chronically malnourished children are 20 per cent less literate than those with a healthier diet, and less able to read or write a simple sentence, and score lower on math’s tests.

The findings of the Save the Children report were based on research on 7,300 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. The report found a connection between nutrition levels and ability to read and write. Children brains can be permanently damaged if proper nutrition is not received, the study concluded. There, however, is no specific profile of children available as part of the study.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) – Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) survey on malnutrition levels earlier this year pegged the malnutrition levels in India at 41.16 percent.

Confirming the grave risk to children in India, Dr. Anuj Sawhney, consultant, neonatology at Fortis La femme, in Delhi, says, “Malnourished children can have impaired brain growth due to which the child may have abnormal mental functioning. Developmental milestones of the child may also get delayed in severe malnutrition.”

The ‘Save the Children’ report says that stunted children are 12.5 percent more likely to make a mistake writing a simple sentence and seven percent are worse in answering simple math’s questions like `What are eight minus three’, than they would have been expected to do had they not been stunted.

“Malnourishment affects the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) level in children which hinders their overall growth,” laments Dr. Ashish Gupta, senior consultant, pediatrics at Rockland Hospital.

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A woman’s nutritional requirements are different from a man’s. Sadly, in India their nutritional requirements are often neglected. A woman dies every ten minutes in India and mostly it’s due to the malnutrition. Their requirements keep changing at different stages – onset of menstruation, pregnancy and menopause. With this article, we aim to make you aware about what the special needs during the various phases are and why:

Onset of menstruation

A lot of iron is lost each month during menstruation making teenage girls and women very prone to iron deficiency anaemia.  One should ensure that they are getting adequate amounts of iron and vitamin C (which aids iron absorption) during this period.

Pregnancy 

A well balanced diet during pregnancy will help a mother-to-be to stay healthy and supply sufficient nutrition to growing foetus. A good intake of all vitamins and minerals is essential during pregnancy. Calcium helps baby’s teeth and bone formation. Vitamin D helps the body to absorb calcium and folic acid reduces the risk of congenital neural tube defect in baby. Iron is required for making baby’s blood as well as for maintaining mothers own iron levels.

Menopause

Women tend to lose more calcium and bone density after menopause making them prone to osteoporosis. At this age, one should eat plenty of dairy products, green leafy vegetables and avoid excessive caffeine and alcohol.

Some of the important nutrients for women at different stages of life are discussed below:

Calcium

 Among all the minerals, calcium occurs in the highest amount in the body. It is a very important mineral for the maintenance of neuromuscular function and for the formation of bone and teeth. Women are more susceptible to osteoporosis especially after menopause. More than 50% of the calcium in the women’s bones are lost in the first five years of menopause. Hence, women should start stocking up on calcium well before its onset, say at the ages between 35 – 40 years. Its recommended dietary allowance in normal adult women is 600 mg/day. During pregnancy, lactation and pre-menopause, the requirement doubles to about 1000-1200 mg/day. Good sources of calcium include milk, curd, cheese, ragi, soybean, amaranth, spinach, drumstick leaves and almonds.

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MUMBAI: An Indian expert has been made a part of the global panel Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition that will work toward reducing undernutrition in children. K Srinath Reddy, president of Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) will be working with the ten-member multi-disciplinary panel for the next three years to review evidence on agriculture and food systems from across the world.

The panel will also provide recommendations on how they should become nutrition-sensitive and identify priorities for cross-sectoral interventions and research relevant to nutrition security. A high-level summit led by British premier David Cameron, Brazilian vice president Michel Temer had announced the panel.

The Nutrition for Growth summit was attended by global leaders, scientists, governments and civil society, to make the ambitious financial and political commitments needed to reach millions of pregnant women and infants with the right nutrition at the right time, and reduce cases of stunting and deaths from severe acute malnutrition.

Reddy is also the co-chair of the United Nations thematic group on ‘Health for All’ under the Sustainable Development Solutions Network global initiative.

London: Some 165 million children worldwide are stunted by malnutrition as babies and face a future of ill health, poor education, low earnings and poverty, the head of the United Nations children’s fund said on Friday.

Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, told Reuters the problem of malnutrition is vastly under-appreciated, largely because poor nutrition is often mistaken for a lack of food.

In reality, he said, malnutrition and its irreversible health consequences also affect relatively well-off countries, such as India where there is plenty of food, but access to it is unequal and nutritional content can be low.

Undernutrition, and especially stunting, is one of the least recognised crises for children in the world. Reuters.

“Undernutrition, and especially stunting, is one of the least recognised crises for children in the world,” Lake said. “It’s a horrible thing. These children are condemned.”

Stunting is the consequence of undernutrition in the first 1,000 or so days of a baby’s life, including during gestation.

Stunted children learn less in school and are more likely themselves to live in poverty and go on to have children also stunted by poor nutrition. These in turn increase poverty in affected countries and regions, and drive greater gaps between the rich and the poor, Lake said.

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New Delhi, May 9 (ANI): Minister for Women and Child Development Krishna Tirath on Thursday said improving nutrition status of India’s women and young children is a high priority for the Government of India.

“The last National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) data indicate about 43 percent children under 5 years of age and 40 percent under three children are underweight,” she said.

Tirath also said that the government has focused efforts on targeting children, mothers and adolescent girls through various programmes of Ministry of Women and Child Development and other ministries. These efforts have been more pronounced after 2005. Thrust was also provided by the PM’s National Nutrition Council taking four key decisions: to strengthen and restructure the ICDS programme, to design a multi-sectoral programme in 200 high-burden districts; to implement a nation-wide IEC campaign against malnutrition; and to bring nutrition focus in various programmes of different ministries.

Tirath, who launched the World Bank assisted ICDS Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP) here, said that the Women and Child Development Ministry has taken several measures recently to strengthen the programme management, planning and monitoring of ICDS with introduction of revised MIS, and the 5-tier monitoring and supervision committee with representation of People’s representatives (MLAs/MPs/PRI Members) to review the progress in ICDS at different levels.

She stated that the strengthening and restructuring of ICDS has already been approved and this will lead to setting up of National and State ICDS Mission with enhanced human and financial resources aimed at transforming AWCs into vibrant child-friendly ECD centres. Tirath said that the Ministry of Women and Child Development has also launched the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) – a conditional maternity benefit scheme which provides a cash benefit of Rs.4000 directly to women 19 years and above for the first two live births if they fulfill specific conditions relating to maternal and child health and nutrition.

She further said that the ICDS nutrition services and provisions of maternity benefits are also part of National Food Security Bill.

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Easy-to-prepare summer salads can help you feel cool in the soaring temperatures, suggest chefs, who recommend nutritious and light preparations to beat the heat.
Two chefs share recipes of summer salads.
“You can put vegetables or meat of your choice (in your salad). A well-constituted salad has Vitamin C, Vitamin K and Vitamin A. All the nutrients help to increase your immunity and fight diseases,” executive sous chef Danish Ashraf at Renaissance Mumbai Convention Centre Hotel, told IANS.
He suggests something as light as a Mixed Leaf Salad.
“Wash and clean lettuce and basil and then put them in cold water for five minutes. Drain out the water and reserve them in a bowl. Then take clean cherry tomatoes and cut them in half. Apple also needs to be sliced,” he said.

For this salad’s dressing, Ashraf advised to whisk olive oil, mustard and honey together. “Then add salt and crushed black pepper, and adjust seasoning according to taste,” he added.

For a country of 1.2 billion people with a million contradictions, what matters more?

That a large number of its children are malnourished OR that they appear to be more malnourished than the children of Sub-Saharan Africa?

Ideally, it should be the former that even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is seemingly ashamed of; but for some, it’s the latter that matters.

Super power India compared with a hopeless, darkest part of the Dark Continent?

Malnourished Indian infant from Madhya Pradesh: Reuters

Impossible!

This is the point that a recent essay by Arvind Panagariya, Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University, makes in the Economic and Political Weekly. Of course, his analysis is rigorous, takes into consideration a few counter-arguments and seeks to make a case for the fact that we are certainly better off than sub Saharan Africa and our children only look smaller and thinner because of a flawed methodology.

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After the flavoured milk scheme for school students fell through, the expert committee appointed by the BMC is going all out to ensure that the proposal to supply nutritious chikki to children takes off.BMC sources indicate that the e-tender to rope in chikki manufacturers and suppliers will be floated in the second week of June.

A four-member expert committee of senior education and health officials headed by BMC’s director of medical education and research, Dr Suhasini Nagda has undertaken numerous field visits to chikki manufacturers and suppliers in Mumbai and Lonavla, before formulating a standardised recipe that appeals to the children.

Two weeks ago, BMC officials visited the manufacturing unit of ‘Gudness’ bar at Lonavla, which is the brainchild of 25-year-old Rajvi Mehta, a Mumbai-bred girl who is studying medicine at Duke University in the US.

A ‘gudness’ bar weighs 40gms and contains nachani, jaggery, white and black sesame seeds, flax seeds and vanilla.

“Our officials visited the plant to study the process in which nutrition bars are manufactured. It is probably the only plant where mechanised processes are in place. We also visited a few other set-ups including Maganlals, the biggest chikki manufacturers in Lonavla. However, chikki there is rolled out by hands,” said a member from the expert committee. “We want a technology through which the manufacturing will have very less human touch and double-packing to nullify the risk of contamination.”

The expert committee is in the process of designing specifications of chikki production before floating the tender.

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CHENNAI: Traditional knowledge should be applied and modern scientific methods should be adopted to increase production of local varieties of rice, native fruits, wild edibles, tubers and other crops said Grigan Gopi, scientist at MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). This will also help improve biodiversity .

These could then be commercialized and promoted for consumption he said at a discussion on the occasion of International Day for Biological Diversity on Wednesday.

The discussion on biodiversity for food and nutritional security also underscored cultivation of millets for income generation, nutrition and other livelihood benefits for local communities. “These are hardy and resilient crops and can be cultivated in adverse climatic conditions,” said Israel Oliver King, scientist at MSSRF.

He pointed out the example of Koli Hills in Nammakal district where through the intervention of MSSRF and other agencies, a n organisation of farmers and Self Help Group’s were able to successfully cultivate millet and find suitable markets for its sale.

V Arivudai Nambi, director, biodiversity, at MSSRF said that Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs), set up Biodiversity Act 2002, which operate at the local level are responsible for preparation of People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) together with identification and notification of Biodiversity Heritage Sites (BHS). He detailed the case studies from Kolli hills, Namakkal, Ramanathpuram and Cuddalore districts where the foundation helped in training and capacity building of the local level institutions.