Indian Children & Women Hungry For Nutrition: National Nutrition Week 2022

In India, National Nutrition Week is observed in the first week of September every year. The government’s goal is to raise awareness about the importance of nutrition for the human body and how we can take adequate and timely measures to eliminate hunger and malnutrition. The theme for this year’s National Nutrition Week was ‘Celebrate a World of Flavours’. 

History of the National Nutrition Week

The week was first recognized in India in 1982 when the Indian government launched several initiatives to motivate and educate people toward a healthy lifestyle. In the first few decades following Independence nutrition was not a priority in the mainstream development discourse of India, despite the Directive Principles placing an onus on the state to improve the overall quality of food among the citizens.

Status Quo

In order to remedy this situation, the Government launched the POSHAN Abhiyaan (Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition) in 2018 to improve nutritional outcomes for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. 

In recent years, nutrition has been recognised as a crucial aspect of the development landscape of our nation. This stems from the fact that undernutrition leads to intergenerational consequences for health and erodes the socio-economic equity that we desire to achieve as a country. 

Disparities in availability of nutrition

While we discuss the importance of proper nutrition, it should be no surprise that like most other areas, nutrition suffers from gender inequality. One in every four women in India suffers from malnutrition as per the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5). The prevalence of undernutrition and anaemia among nearly half of Indian women, particularly pregnant women, poses a significant threat to our future generations. Undernourished mothers give birth to undernourished babies. 

How to ensure parity 

To remedy this wrong a host of steps are required to be undertaken at the macro level.

1. For women and girls, nutrition approaches and programmes must shift to an active lifecycle approach.
2. Unlearning of harmful gendered social norms must be encouraged amongst households and communities. Large-scale awareness must be created with regard to the importance of nutritious meals for all human beings irrespective of their gender identity.
3. By improving the economic power of women and girls in families and communities, chances are that their affordability for full meals is improved

On an individual or micro level- 

1. Women must strive to include iron-rich foods in their diets. This involves the consumption of vitamin C-rich foods such as green leafy vegetables, and citrus fruits such as lemon. This in turn aids in the formation of hemoglobin that carries oxygen in the blood. Due to blood loss during menstruation, pregnancy, and delivery; women require double the amount of blood as men.
2. Folate or vitamin B9 is essential during childbearing age. It significantly reduces the risk of birth defects if taken prior to conception and during the first few weeks of pregnancy.
3. For healthy absorption of calcium, one needs to take vitamin D and magnesium along with calcium. This can be obtained from direct sunlight and foods such as fish, cod, milk, yoghurt,

What Next?

While individual measures are well and good, we cannot turn our back on reality. In order to raise the nutrition levels of entire communities including women and children, concerted efforts are the need of the hour. The NHFS-5 indicates a slow but positive improvement in India’s malnutrition situation. But the problem continues to persist. We cannot deny that with mid-day meals, Poshan Abhiyaan, Free Ration, and other programmes, every stomach is given a meal to eat, but it is insufficient in nutrient quality to sustain the threats of any uninvited disease. The solution must begin at the ground level. Every household must be nutrient-empowered, whether through awareness, self-sufficiency, or service delivery.

Nutrition has gained currency as our country slowly but steadily recovers from the global crisis of Covid-19. The fragile immune system, resulting from undernutrition is more prone to diseases. Amongst the many lessons learnt the pandemic has taught us, the most important one is the need to be more prepared than ever, to work towards moulding communities and policies focused on eating right.

As the National Nutrition week, comes to an end, it would serve the country well to bear in mind that the efforts towards securing adequate nutrition for all our citizens is an ongoing battle with several barriers in sight.