The Global Nutrition Report 2018 is out, but for a low and middle-income country like India, localised stunting and wasting indicators are a result of underlying societal norms of how women make decisions, policy implementation and structural measures. What we need now is effective partnerships between the public, government and NGOs to raise awareness of rich and nutritious diets, consequences of eating more salt or sugar, obesity etc. Undernutrition remains a menace in most of the rural areas. We do have effective policies such as the National Nutrition Policy, but we need to ensure they are effective on different levels across the country.
There is a triple burden of underweight children, anaemic women and overweight adults depending on what they eat. The complex challenge requires a multisectoral solution bringing in digital technologies for improving agriculture, so people grow healthy foods, and improve nutrition, so people eat healthy foods that they grow.
Key Points
- Some of the work underway in Odisha is looking at whether digital platforms offer a novel way to improve these outcomes and what do women do – for decision-making on what to grow, and eat, what barriers and challenges they face etc. for instance, land ownership and participation in agricultural activities.
- There are various groups which are increasingly at risk – such as adolescents’ diet and nutrition, women and their micronutrient intake for improved reproductive health outcomes.
What is important now to address this complex challenge is to pool often-scarce resources, bring varied expertise, and innovative and diverse tools and approaches to make nutrition work for both concerns about being underweight – stunted or wasted – and obesity.