Food first 

Food first 

Context

There is no substitute for hot-cooked mealsto address poor child nutrition

Attempts to commercialise

• Tinkering with the existing national programme of providing hot-cooked meals to children three to six years old, and take-home rations for younger children and pregnant and lactating mothers is fraught with danger
• Attempts to substitute meals or rations with factory-made nutrients will inject commercialisation into a key mission, and upset the nutritional basis of the scheme.

Anganwadi Services Scheme

• If it is to achieve better outcomes, it must focus on the provision of physical infrastructure and funding, besides closer monitoring of the nutrition mission
• Theoretically, the mission covers every child, but in practice it is not accessible to all.

A long way to go

• The National Family Health Survey-4 shows a drop in underweight and stunted children under five years of age compared to the previous survey, but the absolute numbers are still high
• An estimated 35.7% children are underweight and 38.4% are stunted in that age group
• The body mass index of 22.9% women aged 15-49 indicates chronic energy deficiency. These figures should cause alarm that even after a long period of robust economic growth, India has not achieved a transformation

POSHAN Abhiyaan

• An integrator that will build capacity among nutrition workers
• The target of the mission is to bring down stunting among children in the age group 0-6 years from 38.4% to 25% by 2022
• To accelerate the pace of progress, POSHAN Abhiyaan should rigorously measure levels of access and quality of nutrition, and publish the data periodically.

Several States underperforming

• It should be pointed out that NFHS data show several States performing worse than the national average
• In a recent report, Nourishing India , the NITI Aayog refers to acute malnutrition levels of about 25% in some States

Conclusion

There is no quick fix, and the answer to better nutrition lies in fresh, wholesome and varied intake.