Issue of malnutrition amongst children is a serious challenge

21 February, 2013

During my visit to some states in Western and Northern India, I found many young children, especially girls, underweight. This fact became evident just by giving one look at many of these children especially in states such as Karnataka, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Gujarat and perhaps even in Rajasthan.

Even the Chief Minister of Gujarat has gone on record saying that he is concerned about the malnutrition effect on some girl children in Gujarat state and has taken steps to overcome this challenge. Anaemea is a major issue in many states affecting girls and women.

It was also observed in many places that both young girls and women are succumbing to eating chatpatti kind of food regularly. These food items are rich in flavours, including lots of mirch-masalas. Probably this eating habit could be one of the reasons for these girls/women contacting anaemea because there is hardly any nutritious content in such food items which could give a boost to the overall health aspect.

One solution could be to encourage parents to ensure that their children do get a proper nourishing food which should contain food items such as milk, fruits (like bananas etc.), nuts like peanuts, etc., as a staple diet to be taken on a daily basis.

A good interesting example which could be taken as a guideline for the above children is based on one of the food items taken by the evergreen cricket star, Mr. Kapil Dev, who while captaining India brought big laurels for the country by winning the World Cup in 1983. Even otherwise he was pretty successful in many branches of cricket such as fielding, bowling, batting besides being an able captain. All this was made possible, mainly due to the fact that his mother ensured that he drank sufficient milk on an everyday basis right from his childhood.

Such examples could be told to children to motivate them to go in for nutritious food on an everyday basis and desist from succumbing to taking regularly chatpatti food items. The media can also be encouraged to bring out innovative advertisements to be shown on television, movie halls and through other mediums of advertisement.