POSHAN MAAH ( NATIONAL NUTRITION MONTH), 2020

Proper nutrition becomes very important for every human life for every age group, whether you are an infant or old person. There have been various cases of malnutrition in the newborn child the mother took as the reason being no proper diet. To spread awareness about the importance of nutrition and to educate people about proper balancing diet, the Government of India started National Nutrition Week in the year 1982. Nowadays people don’t follow Healthy lifestyle as we talk about Indian food, in the past years more focus has been put upon the taste factor over health. We also know about the good quality of ingredients present in our Indian spices, but if we excessively use the same, they can show or cause us ultra vires and harmful results. So, though this initiative will focus more on the health of the pregnant mother in the first place, then focus will also be put on the newborn child for the first 1000 days. The focus was also on optimal growth and development of an individual as proper requisite is the precondition for a healthy life as it helps in reducing the risk of chronic diseases.

Important Features of National Nutrition Month –

National Nutrition Month, 2020 is an annual campaign created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in September. The theme for this Rashtriya POSHAN MAAH,2020 is, ‘Complementary feeding’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the campaign of Rashtriya POSHAN MAAH in “man ki Baat '' programme where he talks about his vision about the nation and how that can be achieved. This is a campaign to free India from undernutrition, malnutrition and obesity. This campaign is also important from the Fit-India point of view. During the recent ‘Mann ki Baat’ programme he talked about malnutrition. Also, he highlighted a lack of awareness about nutrition, and a balanced diet is the reason for bad nutrition rate in India. He also focused on how the poor sector is the victim of malnutrition. Under this scheme, the focus was laid down on Complementary food, now it becomes more important to understand about complimentary food, so when there is necessary to intake more energy and nutrition an infant after six months of age should be provided complimentary food other than breastmilk or formula. Analogy behind proper nutrition is simple as it will prevent infectious decreases in children. If we focus on POSHAN ABHIYAAN itself, then it stands as Prime Minister’s Overreaching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment. Its main vision is to control the malnutrition rate to zero by 2022. This Abhiyaan was launched in March 2018 in Rajasthan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The main aim was to improve nutrition among children below six years of age, pregnant women, adolescent girls and lactating mothers. This Abhiyaan also focuses on the role and plan of the first thousand days. The first two years are the deciding factors in childhood development and mental health, many diseases which include obesity, health risks, hypertension may be determined by an empirical study of nutrition during this period. As a part of the initiative and a month occasion, the focus should be more on kitchen gardening, growing multivitamin foods in homes and there should be a limit to junk food, rational eating by choosing food full of nutrition should be there. The focus is on the family unit from the kitchen itself at the micro-level, but this campaign is followed nationwide, the impact can be seen at the national level, i.e. at the macro level.

Conclusion-

We have discussed the importance of National Nutrition Month that it has the potential to change the mind of people for better as many people do not bother about nutrition intake and they are highly insensitive about their health. Further schools should follow the practice to use Nutrition report cards in order to track their Nutrition intake, and schools should organize a cultural event to increase the awareness about nutrition and properly balanced diet and also effects of junk foods and its deficiencies. A good diet is important in many ways as when a person remains physically fit; he can executive his physical fitness into their work and a good diet helps people to achieve mental fitness. There should be diversity in nutrition, like people should take macro and micronutrients in the proper ratio.