Malnutrition among children: Parents, teachers must shape wards

With increasing number of schoolchildren suffering from malnutrition, experts said it is the responsibility of parents and teachers to create awareness among their wards about healthy eating habits. “Eat healthy and stay healthy should be the slogan,” said an expert.

Dr Sanjay Borude, obesity surgeon at the Breach Candy Hospital, said: “Nowadays, many teenagers visiting us for consultation. These kids suffer from morbid obesity. But still we ask them to try all option to reduce weight.”

“Parents are more worried about their kids rising weight. Parents need to focus on their diet from the beginning to avoid the crashing diet and other available option of loosing weight. They have to see what their children eat outside,” he added.

Experts said that if students follow the right advice, then most of their problems will be resolved in this initial stage only.
A competition on “Healthy Snack Options” organised by the SVT college has thrown up some positive outcomes. Students came out with delicious healthy snack options such as oats cookies, nachni muthias and flax seed ladoos. The recipes were well appreciated by the panel of judges. Beside this, poetry competition was organised on junk food.

“Many of the children were not aware about the ill effects of crash dieting and followed it just because of peer pressure. Parents should teach them importance of physical activity and its benefits and different ways to manage stress,” said one parent on condition of anonymity.