- While several innovative inventions, developments, growth, and even more novelty factors make this beautiful planet an attractive proposition to sustain life for humanity. The same factors embraced by us with such open admiration are proving to be counterproductive for our well-being. Humankind has always been on the lookout for producing balanced dietary preferences, knowing fully well that to lead a healthy life, we are left with no choice but to be wiser on this front. Thus, since time immemorial, humankind’s quest for nutritious and healthy dietary explorations has always been accorded top priority. The present modern-day world, driven by cutting-edge technologies, has not succeeded in upholding the virtues of healthy eating habits.
PC: Times of India
- One of the major concerns governing healthcare connoisseurs around the world must be the way our eating habits are opening up doors for unhealthy trends, including obesity and malnutrition, courtesy of eating largely processed food, which is neither healthy nor nutritious. How does India as a country fare on these metrics? A growing number of overweight children is alarming, but unfortunately, most Indians simply don’t get the basics of eating healthy. UN saying overweight and obesity are dominant forms of malnutrition among children and teens, especially in lower and middle-income nations, like India, will no doubt not move a leaf, let alone the mountains of ultra-processed foods more widely available than potable water.
PC: Kids News
- Further, the UNICEF report makes for grim reading. It details the outsized impact of ultra-processed food and beverages on growing children, how marketing shapes bad food habits, the F&B industry’s deep pockets, and deeper political influence. Truth is that unethical business practices that let ultra-processed foods march into kids’ hands couldn’t have flourished without govts looking away. Additionally, India has a bewildering lack of a basic sense of nutrition. This, in turn, is because food for millions is political and cultural, with a gender aspect. The last first. Even today, upper caste customs of what widows can eat prevail in pockets. Growing girls are fed diets less for nutrition, more centred around versions of beauty.
PC: Health Digest
- That’s why special pregnancy foods exist across subcultures. But shoving cocktails of vitamins & micronutrients down the throat of a nutritionally deficient young woman isn’t going to buy her health overnight. Food is rarely measured on nutrition – unless prescribed – but more as shared values of a community, sliced, and spliced by caste, region, and ethnicity, clans adding their own touch. Tradition and inflation decide what’s cooked in the kitchen; self-imposed restraints are less for health, more for custom. Upshot in urbanized India: festival foods and ultra-processed junk are common ground – cheap, convenient, and without the baggage of cultural do’s and don’ts. Awareness of food as nutrition is a road seldom travelled. This must be prioritized by all.
