The Ministry of WCD with a noble cause for drafting a nutrition policy for the children has decided to call nutritional experts, child experts, child health specialists, researchers, and academicians to hold discussions with them.
The suggestions would facilitate the ministry in drafting proposals for the children’s nutrition policy followed by making Act in this direction.
The Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhary was in her inaugural speech on a “colloquium on Obesity in children and adolescents” said “Changing lifestyle and food patterns have created new challenges, nutritional awareness is must to keep our children healthy.”
The programme was organised by the ministry for WCD with the objective to understand the prevalence, trends, and factors contributing to obesity and related problems in children and adolescents and to suggest strategy to overcome these.
Renuka Chowdhary stated that a viable strategy would be prepared for effective intervention to combat obesity among children and adolescents. She was expressing her concern at the backdrop of some recent reports about augmenting obesity and lifestyle related disease among the children.
She said that her ministry is working to circulate guidelines among the schools and awareness campaign among the parents to check malnutrition.
She accepted that the fast food cultures in metro cities are one of the strong reasons for obesity among children. Children today are more interested in eating burger, patty, pizza, samosa, chowmin, or cold drinks etc rather than nutritious foods cooked in houses.
Another blazing reason of obesity has been the lack of physical activities and sports, which is a crucial factor for the improvement of child health.
Chowdhury said that her Ministry would request urban development Ministry and State Governments to consider making the provision for playing space mandatory before approving any housing project. She also urged the processed food industry and fast food manufacturers to encourage whole-wheat and whole-pulp products.
The participants emphasised the need of immediate measures to check enhancing trends of obesity in overweight, which is the major cause of hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and mortality during the adult life.
The Department of Women and Child Development (WCD) has adopted a number of significant measures in the last one-year to give the much needed momentum to the holistic development of women and children.
The minister was recently at the core of criticism for promoting pre-cooked food and biscuits in place of hot cooked meals in the pre-school feeding programme under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme.
The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme was conceived in 1975 with an integrated delivery package of early childhood services so that their synergistic effect can be taken full advantage of.
The Scheme was adopted with an endeavour to improve the nutritional and health status of vulnerable groups including pre-school children, pregnant women and nursing mothers through providing a package of services including supplementary nutrition, pre-school education, immunization, health check-up, referral services and nutrition & health education.
Besides, the Scheme envisages effective junction of inter-sectoral services in the anganwadi centres.
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