INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES TO COMBAT MALNUTRITION

Adversity always brings forth the best in mankind, and it is the lack of challenges that result in decay of civilizations. Our generation had worked hard and faced the challenges of the last two decades in hope that we will give our children, health, as their heritage. The nutritional status of the population can be considered a good yardstick of the development of that nation. It is nevertheless a paradox-on one hand without adequate nutritional status, development efforts cannot be optimized and on other, without rational overall development, nutrition level cannot improve. While the whole underprivileged population suffers to some extent, the maximum brunt falls on woman and young children.

Malnutrition leads to high social and public costs through increased public expenditure on health services. The adoption of appropriate, cost effective and innovative strategies like dietary diversification, food fortification, vitamin and mineral supplementation and public health and disease control measures need to be adopted and implemented. The first two approaches are food based approaches wherein the focus is on the fact that food provides essential nutrients, micronutrients and trace elements. Food fortification is increasingly recognized as an effective medium to long term projects to combat malnutrition worldwide using various strategies like for iodine supplementation via iodized salt, oil and water, the main focus being universal salt iodization. Based on the food technological aspects iron fortification has been used in many foods like extruded products mainly pasta products, flour, soya chunks, waffles etc. fortification of breads, biscuits, cakes, pastries and other confectionaries etc. are gaining momentum.

Fortification or enrichment of widely consumed foods with micronutrients is thus an effective strategy to prevent and control malnutrition. It can be made popular by using innovative method like in industrialized countries a large number of food fortified by vitamin A is available on the market such as milk, yoghurt, biscuits, juices, cereal bars, cocoa drinks, breakfast cereals etc. making sure that a sufficient supply is guaranteed. In developing countries like India, however, fats and oils, margarine, sugar, maize and wheat flour have been fortified.

The concept of nutrition has evolved almost as rapidly as man has and in today's world there is a higher level of innovation and production with enthusiasm which can help eradicate malnutrition from the grass root levels using an integrated approach to strengthen this spirit with the cooperation in policy making and implementation.