‘Nutrition ignored in favour of large diets’

PUDUCHERRY: A four-day master training course on nutrition education for field officers was conducted by Food and Nutrition Board, Puducherry Ministry of Women and Child Development, putting t
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PUDUCHERRY: A four-day master training course on nutrition education for field officers was conducted by Food and Nutrition Board, Puducherry Ministry of Women and Child Development, putting the spotlight squarely on a host of issues ranging from nutrition to waning farming traditions.

“The food and lifestyle habits have changed drastically where the focus is more on the quantity of diet than nutrition. As a result of lack of exercises and less manual work, people in their thirties have fallen prey to blood pressure and diabetes.While in the olden days in one class, there was only one obese schoolboy, today there is only one lean child,” said S Ravi Pragasm, additional director, agricultural department.

He added that the quantity of food consumed should be in ratio of the work undertaken as eating five course meals without any exercise thrown in is inviting disease.

Also, R Sathyaseelan, director, agricultural department, said that agricultural lands have come down from 30,000 hectares to 20,000 hectares and are still declining, whereas population has been on the rise, creating an imbalance of sorts.

“The main reason for this is factories and colleges. While the whole of Tamil Nadu has only about 18 medical colleges, UT which is comparatively much smaller has eight with each needing more than 50 hectares of land, for which agricultural lands are being sacrificed. This coupled with the dying tradition of farming where farmers discourage their kith and kin from embracing farming has added to the problem,” he said.

Officers from the UT, Villupuram and Cuddalore districts participated in the four-day training course which is being conducted at the Farmer Training Center at the agricultural complex, Thattanchavadi.

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