Create Awareness on Dietary Guidelines

Nutrition plays a very important role in the development of human resource. Human resource is one of the strengths of any stronger nation. A healthy population can lead the nation better in all the frontiers like education, economics, agriculture, defence, medical and other sciences in the Country. Therefore, in all the countries depending on the nutritional status of the population and the availability of foods, dietary guidelines are formulated. These dietary guidelines are the steps enable the population lead a healthy life. Against this backdrop, the National Institute of Nutrition, one of the internationally reputed Institutes of the country working under the aegis of Indian Council of Medical Research had constituted a committee in 1998 and after thorough deliberations 14 dietary guidelines were formulated. The institute carried out a series of outreach activities including extension lectures, exhibitions and distribution of IEC materials in local languages to the community in different parts of the country. The updated guidelines also need to be circulated among different stake-holder communities viz. policy makers, UN agencies, academia, medical professionals, nutrition departments etc. The recent NFHS-3 survey showed that there was no significant improvement in the nutritional status of the population as compared to the findings of NFHS-2. Recent surveys carried out by the National Nutrition Monitoring Beaureau provided more insight on the issues related to double burden of malnutrition such undernutrition on one hand and over nutrition that leads to obesity and other degenerative diseases on the other. In the recent meeting of the 2nd Annual Forum convened by the Solutions Exchange, The Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) Community, a breakaway session was convened by Dr. Kamala Krishnaswamy, Former Director, NIN and discussed about various strategies to use IEC Interventions to Create Awareness on Dietary Guidelines for Indians formulated by NIN.
Therefore, it is decided to revise the dietary guidelines and I request the members of Solution Exchange, e-core group members, policy makers, academia, medical professionals and nutritionists to give their valuable suggestions on line, so that we can pool the data which would help us develop a practical and action-oriented DGs for the community.

Dr.D.Raghunatha Rao
Assistant Director & Convener
Dietary Guidelines Revision Committee
Extension & Training Division
National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad
Email : et@ninindia.org
drr_rao@yahoo.com Mobile: 9848755981