Cooked food wins hands down

The continual disbursal of sub-standard and non-palatable food packets by the state government is pushing thousands of malnourished schoolchildren closer to the brink every year.

DNA had reported on October 1 (How many deaths will it take till govt knows that too many kids have died?) that children in various parts of the state are not consuming the take-home ration (THR) provided by the government because of its poor taste and quality, a prime factor for the increase in malnutrition deaths.

In fact, according to a report prepared by a group of experts hot cooked food is more beneficial than THR for children aged six months to three years. DNA has a copy of the report prepared by Dr Ashish Satav (MD, medicine), president of MAHAN, Melghat; Dr Vibhavari Dani (MD, paediatrics), former dean of Government Medical College, Nagpur and Jayshree Pendharkar, diet consultant and nutritionist at the Central India Institute of Medical Sciences (CIIMS), Nagpur.

Currently, THR is given to children in the form of packets of sheera, upma, sukhdi and sattu, which the report says is chiefly responsible for the rise in malnutrition deaths. A joint verification of the prevalence of severe malnutrition in 16 villages, carried out by the state government and MAHAN, an NGO in Melghat, found that the percentage of malnourished children has gone up by 3% from the 6% mark in 2007. Although THR, which was brought in across the state in 2010, is also advocated for severely malnourished children, “its nutrients are not as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines”, said nutritionist Pendharkar.

Advocating better acceptance levels of hot cooked food by children, Dr Satav said, “Children will culturally accept the diet prepared by self-help groups and malnutrition will go down. Moreover, it is cheaper, socially acceptable, approachable, and safe, and hence sustainable and replicable.” In fact, food cooked by self-help groups helped reduced the prevalence of severe malnutrition from 7% in 2007 to 3.6% in 2009-10 among children in aanganwadis.”

Further, the report cites the health hazards of soya bean and moong (green gram) — the two main and high potassium ingredients of THR.

As per WHO and UNICEF guidelines, high amount of potassium must be avoided for severely malnourished children. On the other hand, food prepared by SHGs from locally available material provides adequate protein, calories, fat and micronutrients like sodium, potassium, calcium, vitamin C, and vitamin D, says the report.