USING EGGS AS WEAPONS IN FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER & MALNUTRITION IN INDIA
Day before yesterday ie on 9th Octobe 2020, World Egg Day was celebrated around the world and helps to raise awareness of the benefits of eggs and their importance in human nutrition. World Egg Day was established at the IEC Vienna 1996 conference when it was decided to celebrate World Egg Day on the second Friday in October each year.This year the world egg day celebration is special because last year the IEC has elected Mr. Suresh Chitturi, Vice Chairman & Managing Director of Srinivasa Farms is the first Indian and Asian to be elected Chairman of the International Egg Commission (IEC).
Todays topic “USING EGGS AS WEAPONS IN FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER & MALNUTRITION IN INDIA” is more suitable on this occasion to let the policy makers of India know about the role of eggs that Egg can play in combating the giant problems of hunger and malnutrition in India.
The famous quote of the Hippocrates also known as the father of medicine that” Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy me food” Holds good 100% in the context of human nutrition.
For centuries, eggs have played a major role in feeding families around the globe. They are an unbeatable package when it comes to versatility and top-quality protein at a very affordable price. And they are also an excellent source of choline, essential in memory and brain development. When you factor in convenience and terrific taste, there is just no competition.
Eggs are one of nature’s highest quality sources of protein, and indeed contain many of the key ingredients for life. The proteins contained within eggs are highly important in the development of the brain and muscles, have a key role to play in disease prevention and contribute to general well being.
Now countries across the world are turning to chicken and eggs to fight global hunger and malnutrition. Despite a fast-growing economy and the largest anti-malnutrition programme, India has the world’s worst level of child malnutrition. The government plans to pump in Rs 1,23,580 crore over the next five years to tackle the problem.
As we know ,India home to the largest number of malnourished children. In the absence of latest government figures, estimates by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in 2006 show that 48 per cent, or 61 million, under-five children in the country are stunted (they have low height for their age); 43 per cent, or 53 million, are underweight; and nearly 20 per cent, or 25 million, are wasted (low weight for height). Of the 25 million wasted children, eight million are severely wasted or suffer from severe acute malnutrition . India is home to one-third such children. Sixty per cent of them live in six states: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Such high prevalence of child malnutrition in India defies logic. After all, the country’s economy has doubled since 1991, when the government started counting the malnourished children. The world’s largest programme to tackle child malnutrition, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), has been in force in the country since 1975, much before any country, other than the US, introduced measures to tackle the problem.
All the states with a high burden of malnutrition have the public distribution system in place to ensure that the poor, even in inaccessible areas, get food grains at subsidised rates. Yet, reports regularly appear both within and outside the country, highlighting child deaths due to malnutrition.
According to the Registrar General of India, in 2010, under-five mortality in India was 59 per 1,000 live births, one of the highest in the world. In 2012, British non-profit Save the Children reported that 1.83 million Indian children die every year before they turn five and pinned malnutrition as the key reason for the deaths.
“The child may eventually die of a disease, but that disease was lethal because the child was unable to fight back due to malnutrition,” Victor Aguayo, chief of Child Nutrition and Development at Unicef-India, told the media in New Delhi recently.
All surveys indicate that India is slipping into a vicious cycle of malnutrition. Scientists say the initial 1,000 days of an individual’s lifespan, from the day of conception till he or she turns two, is crucial for physical and cognitive development. But more than half the women of childbearing age are anaemic and 33 per cent are undernourished, according to NFHS 2006. A malnourished mother is more likely to give birth to malnourished children.
The HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition) Survey across 112 rural districts in 2011 by non-profit Naandi Foundation shows the impact of the world’s oldest anti-malnutrition programme. Eighty per cent of the mothers have not heard the word malnutrition in their local language, says the report.
Parliament passed the National Food Security Act, which aims at fighting malnutrition by tackling food insecurity. The following month, the Centre declared that NFHS will resume after a gap of seven years. In 2012, the 12th Five-Year Plan restructured the ICDS scheme immediately after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh termed malnutrition as a “national shame”. The scheme provides supplementary nutrition, pre-school education, health and immunisation to children under the age of six in more than 600 high-burden districts by setting up more anganwadi centres. So far, ICDS was catering to the needs of children in the age group of three to six, leaving out the crucial under-three children. The Centre has allocated a whopping Rs 1,23,580 crore for the scheme. This is almost thrice the budget allocated to ICDS in the previous Plan period. The government hopes this will help bring down malnutrition among under-three children by 10 per cent and among girls and women by 20 per cent.
But are these measures sufficient to tackle the menace?
In popular perception, poverty is synonymous with malnutrition. Reports show a major chunk of malnourished children belong to poor families and traditionally poor states. But rates of malnutrition are also significant among middle- and high-income families.
As the stage is set for onslaught of malnutrition, it is time to critically look at the not-so-obvious reasons for its high prevalence in the country.
WHO’S STANDARD
It is based on children from well-off background
In 2006, the world adopted a growth standard developed by WHO to measure malnutrition. These standards were prepared after measuring the growth of 8,500 children from six countries—Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman and the United States—for two years. Selection of the children was made on the following conditions:
• Good economic condition of parents
• Access to safe drinking water and sanitation
• Low mobility of mother so that children receive regular care
• Mothers adhering to breast feeding and other recommended diet patterns
• Access to nearby hospitals and total immunisation
• Use of micronutrient supplements
• One of the parents must have 17 years of education
• Mother must be non-smoker
During the survey, WHO officials measured height, weight, and circumference of the head and the mid-upper arm is proportion to the age of under-five children. Based on the survey findings, WHO created the growth chart.
Though these standards show how a child is growing, countries use it as a standard to check malnutrition. Countries measure the growth of children against this WHO chart to identify if a child is malnourished. A child is categorised as underweight (low weight for age or less than 2.5 kg at birth), wasted (low weight for height) and stunted (low height for age). Stunting is an indicator of chronic under nutrition, especially protein-energy malnutrition, and is caused due to prolonged food deprivation and/or disease or illness. Wasting is an indicator of acute under nutrition and is the result of more recent food deprivation or illness. Underweight is used as a composite indicator to reflect both acute and chronic under nutrition.
At the village level, an anganwadi worker is the first to identify a malnourished child. She registers every birth in her area and monitors the child’s growth at regular intervals. While the WHO formula uses three measures of physical growth—age, weight and height—to judge nutritional status of a child, anganwadi workers usually prepare the growth chart based on weight alone. If a child is detected underweight, which is a measure of malnourishment, the anganwadi worker refers him or her to NRC for intensive nutrition treatment.
India is in the midst of a war of sorts — a war over eggs. To eat them, or not to eat them. Actually, it’s more about whether the government should give free eggs to poor, malnourished children.
It all began in when Shivraj Chouhan, the Ex- chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, shot down a proposal and still opposing to serve eggs in government-run day care centers (anganwadis) in some tribal areas.This is totally un acceptable in the country like India which is going to be in the line of developed countries like USA under the dynamic leadership of visionary PM Hon. Narendra Modi.In order to bring the awareness among the common people about the malnutrition and its solution following things can be done:
People can be educated on
• The nutritional quality of common foods
• Importance and nutritional quality of various locally available and culturally accepted low cost foods
• Importance of exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continuing to breast feed up to two years or beyond.
• Damage caused by irrational beliefs and cultural practices of feeding
• Recipes for preparing proper weaning foods and good supplementary food from locally available low cost foods.
• mportance of including milk, eggs, meat or pulses in sufficient quantities in the diet to enhance the net dietary protein value.
• Importance of feeding children and adults during illness
• Importance and advantages of growing a kitchen garden
• Importance of immunizing their children and following proper sanitation in their day to day life.
Early detection of malnutrition and intervention
• The longer the developmental delays remain uncorrected, the greater the chance of permanent effects and hence intervention must occur during pregnancy and first three years of life.
• A well recorded growth chart can detect malnutrition very early. Velocity of growth is more important than the actual weight at a given time
• If growth of the child is slowed or is arrested as shown by flat curve on the growth card, physician should be alerted and any hidden infection or any reason for nutritional deficiency must be evaluated and taken care of.
• If growth chart is not maintained, anthropometric indices like, weight, height mid arm circumference, and chest circumference etc. can be measured and used for evaluation of nutrition.
Nutrition supplementation
Usually, biologically vulnerable groups like pregnant women, infants, preschool going and school going children are targeted by various welfare measures conducted by the government. Calories, proteins and micronutrients like iron, vitamin A and zinc can be supplemented.
Objective of nutrition supplementation of infants and children includes
• To treat and rehabilitate severely malnourished subjects .
• Improve the general health and wellbeing of children, increase the resistance to infectious illnesses and thereby decrease morbidity,
• Accelerate the physical growth and mental development of children
• Improve the academic performance and learning abilities of children.
Objective of supplementing pregnant and lactating women include
• Preventing anemia in the mother thus improving her health and the pregnancy outcome.
• Improving calorie intake and prevent low birth weight baby, thus breaking the vicious cycle of intergenerational cycle of growth failure.
• Supplementing calcium to prevent osteoporosis.
ROLE OF EGGS IN COMBATING MALNUTRITION–——–
Eggs are incredibly easy sources of protein and also provide calcium, vitamins, fatty acids, minerals and other bioactive compounds that can improve brain development in children . it is true that many foods are high in protein and nutrients. However, eggs are uniquely valuable because they are naturally packaged in a neat little shell. Eggs can also be cooked easily and incorporated into a wide variety of dishes. This means that eggs can likely be integrated into traditional cultural dishes with minimal effort. Although eggs contain so much potential within their little shells, egg consumption is extremely low in developing countries. Compared to developed countries, where eggs can be purchased cheaply, eggs tend to be expensive and uncommon in developing countries . Many contributors to a recent FAO Global Food Security and Nutrition Forum pointed to the cost of chicken feed as the main reason why eggs are so expensive in developing nations. Additionally, some also highlighted the fact that eggs are taboo in certain regions due to a belief that eggs are high in cholesterol and are linked to cardiovascular disease.
Because eggs can, to some extent, offer a solution to hunger and malnutrition in developing regions, extension agents, governments, the private sector and other actors should work together to decrease the cost of eggs and promote egg consumption.
One example of how to increase egg consumption and consequently improve the nutrition of children is for governments to promote “an egg a day.” India experimented with an “an egg a day” program that mandated all schools to provide a mid-day egg to each student every school day with the intent of improving child health. This way, regardless of income, each child who attends school is provided with a source of protein and other key nutrients. This can also help increase school attendance and child academic performance. Moreover, this program can be a model for other governments and can demonstrate that improving child health via eggs is worth state investment.
Eggs are almost pure protein, of very high quality. They also provide virtually the entire Adequate Intake, for young children, of vitamin B12 and choline.
The essential fatty acid content of eggs may be especially important in pregnancy. Nearly the whole world – with the notable exception of the vegetarian belt of India – likes to eat eggs, and they can be produced at prices which make them accessible even to the moderately poor.
There will always be a gap to bridge. Promoting egg consumption can foster people’s participation in the market whilst improving family diets.
The humble egg seems increasingly likely to offer a practical and impactful opportunity to tackle these problems. Eggs are almost pure protein, of very high quality. They also provide virtually the entire Adequate Intake, for young children, of vitamin B12 and choline. The essential fatty acid content of eggs may be especially important in pregnancy. Nearly the whole world—with the notable exception of the vegetarian belt of India—likes to eat eggs, and they can be produced at prices which make them accessible even to the moderately poor.
Now countries across the world are turning to chicken and eggs to fight global hunger and malnutrition.Across the world, countries groaning under the burden of malnutrition are finding household food security and good nutrition via backyard poultry.
Why India needs eggs on the menu of midday meals(MDM)& Anganwadis-———–
Eggs’re very nutritious, have a relative long shelf-life and could boost rural employment.
why we need eggs on the menu of two government programmes for child nutrition: the mid-day meal scheme and anganwadis (for pre-school children under the age of six).
- Eggs are among the most nutritious food items
Here’s a comparison of the nutritive content of eggs and some vegetarian options of roughly similar cost.
Note: Eggs are sometimes criticised for their fat content, but most young children in India need more fat. Aside from helping to raise calorie intake and facilitating the absorption of other nutrients, fat is important in its own right, for brain development, for example.
One more thing: though some vegetarian options can match eggs in protein content (for example, soya chunks) or calcium (for example, milk), there are none where all nutrients (vitamin A, iron, calcium and fat) are available from a single source. - Other arguments in favour of eggs
Consider the following advantages of eggs: they have a longer shelf-life than milk or bananas. In rural areas, with decentralised kitchens and where refrigeration facilities are non-existent, this is a pretty useful thing. Eggs cannot be diluted or adulterated like milk or dals. Equally important, & provision of eggs can be monitored easily. Even a child can tell you whether she got her full quota of eggs, so corruption is easier to control. Finally, eggs are hugely popular among school and anganwadi children. - Indian children are undernourished and food intake is very poor
The last reliable all-India nutrition data dates back to 2005-’06. According to the third National Family Health Survey, every second child under the age of three is undernourished. This is relatively well known now. However, few people realise how poor dietary intake in India is. Among children aged 6 months-23 months (for whom breastmilk is to be supplemented with semi-solid foods), the National Family Health Survey finds, less than 15% consume milk products (such as yoghurt), or meat or eggs, or pulses on an average day (see table below). In the same age group, among those children who were no longer being breastfed, the numbers are slightly better but still under 20%. - A large majority of Indians are non-vegetarian: There is a widely held belief that a majority of Indians are vegetarians. However, study shows, “pure vegetarians” are a minority, only in one-fifth families were all members vegetarians. Nine percent were vegetarians who ate eggs. Nearly 70% families were non-vegetarians.
- Quite likely, some people are vegetarians out of compulsion rather than choice
Sometimes data on low consumption of non-vegetarian food (eggs, meat, fish, poultry) is interpreted as evidence of vegetarianism in India. In fact, this is likely a reflection, not of choice but compulsion. It shows that monthly consumption of eggs is closely associated with income levels. This strengthens the argument for provision of more nutritious food through government programmes. Given that it is largely poorer children who enrol at government schools, the programme has an element of self-targeting. - Making a case for eggs, does not mean one is a meat-fundamentalists
One must recognise that the problem is not just the absence of eggs from the menu at schools and anganwadis. The menu is woefully lacking even in nutritious vegetarian options (such as milk, soyabean, bananas) in many states. Here is a beautiful photo-essay of school meals around the world. Many egg-resisters shout loudly about nutritious vegetarian substitutes for eggs, but fail to mention that in fact many northern and western states provide none of these. In any case, even if eggs are served, vegetarian options are (and ought to be) available for those who don’t want eggs. - Thinking about animal rights
Some groups have been opposing eggs as they are concerned about animal rights, especially the inhuman conditions in which chicken are reared. In fact, the same concern applies to milk too – calves are separated too early from their mothers, cows are given oxytocin injections and subjected to painful milking. The solution is not to stop consuming these items, but rather thinking about ethical solutions. For example, eggs could be procured from local women who rear free-range chicken on a small scale. That would even create employment opportunities for such women. In any case, as mentioned earlier, there is no compulsion as far as consumption of eggs is concerned.
In keeping with the American political slogan of yore, “A chicken in every pot,” our neighbor ,The poorest country who always stretch hands for getting donation the Pakistan Premier Imran Khan has announced his anti-poverty scheme, “A chicken on every plot” in November 2018. That is, giving five hens and a rooster to several million poor families, especially rural women, so they can add a healthy ingredient to their diets and earn income at home by selling eggs.
Not just. International organisations and development funders are looking at chicken and eggs to find a credible answer to global hunger. Feed the Future, the US Government’s global hunger and food security initiative, has teamed up with scientists at the University of California at Davis to increase poultry production by breeding healthy chickens that are heat and disease resistant. A host of African countries—from Rwanda to Sierra Leone to Ethiopia—are building large chicken farms to provide eggs and meat at affordable prices. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the major contributor to malnutrition and poor growth both in the womb and during the vulnerable first years of life is due to low-quality food. Poultry and eggs provide affordable pure protein and can play a key role in fighting hunger and malnutrition in poor countries.
AN ANCIENT INDIAN BIRD
The chicken was actually an Indian bird. Some 7,000 years ago the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus murghi) began its journey from forest to farm in and around the Indus Valley civilisation. With archaeologists recovering chicken bones from Lothal in Gujarat, it’s possible to say that our ancestors in that distant past were rearing the wild birds and eating their eggs.
The ambiguity started with Vedic Aryans. They linked the symbolism of eggs to creation itself, the cosmic egg, and included it as a healing diet in medical treatises like Susruta and Charaka. Yet the status of chicken and eggs as food were not clear. The scavenging habits of the bird may have made them “unclearn”. Or it may also have been a negative reaction, because chicken and the egg were foods relished by “outsiders”—non-Aryans, Greeks, Bactrians, Scythians and Parthians. Arab visitors in the middle ages observed that ordinary Indians did not usually eat cows, chicken and eggs.
Persian, Portuguese and British culinary influences made eggs more acceptable. Yet for much of the 20th century, egg and chicken consumption in India thrived largely outside the home—as street food, in canteens, clubs and cafes. In 1950-51, per capita availability of eggs was just 5 per annum in India, as per agriculture ministry data but today India’s position is the 3rd in terms of global egg production just after China & USA. At present ,We are having 72 eggs per capita availability against NIN & ICMR recommendation of minimum 180 eggs per annum.
CHANGING FOOD BASKET———–
From the 1970s, however, egg consumption started going up in India. The Green Revolution from the late 1960s, with its single-minded focus on wheat and rice, made all other inexpensive sources of dietary protein—pulses to millets—scarce and expensive. And gradually Indians shifted to eggs and chicken to fulfil their protein requirement, as shown by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSSO).
In the new millennium, India’s food basket has changed. Eggs and chicken are some of the fastest growing foods around the world and in India too. It’s called ‘Livestock Revolution,’ a term coined by The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the late ’90s. That means, a fundamental change in the way people eat. Instead of traditional staple cereals, the demand for food of animal origin grows, as incomes rise, lifestyles change, globalisation impacts a young and increasingly urban population. Vegetarianism has gradually become less strict in the country, with more than 50 per cent Indians between age 15 and 34 eating some form of meat, shows a 2016 national survey.
The popularity of poultry meat has zoomed in the last two decades, accounting for about 45 per cent of the total meat consumed. The poultry sector has turned into a major commercial industry.It has become the sector of worth more than 1.25 lakhs Cr.INR providing employment of more than 6 million rural youth of India, directly and indirectly With 112 billion eggs produced a year, up from 34 billion in 2000, the country is the world’s third largest producer. The annual per capita availability also zoomed to 72 eggs and 4.5 Kg of meat, most of it from chickens, although it is far below the recommended level of consumption of 180 eggs and 10.8 kg poultry meat per person per annum by the Indian Council Medical Research.
IN THE BACKYARD
Even the richest man in the world Bill Gates is setting his sights on poultry as an antidote to poverty. Once he quoted that in order to get ride of poverty, hunger n malnutrition, the role of poultry is prime.
Chicken and eggs still remain outside the pale of poor people in poor countries, while the affluent world consumes in excess of their dietary needs, reports the FAO (Shaping the future of livestock: sustainably, responsibly, efficiently, 2018). Although India has nearly 70 per cent of its population living in rural areas, about 75-80 per cent eggs and poultry meat are consumed by just 25 per cent of Indians living in urban areas. Most of rural and tribal Indians do not have access to poultry products, nor can they afford those.
According to scholars and activists, the lack of access or affordability to highly nutritious products like egg and meat results in malnutrition in the countryside. They are calling for adoption of small-scale, free-range poultry farming in the backyards of rural households, as a powerful tool to fight rural poverty and malnutrition. Based on traditional breeds, such farming can conserve some of the indigenous breeds of chicken under threat of extinction now, as well as contribute to dietary protein intake and incomes of resource-poor households.Now there is great question to be answered by the policy maker-
Will such a model of family nourishment work in India? Will there be the political will to include backyard farming in a country where eggs are removed from school mid-day meals, depriving 10 crore children across India of a precious source of wholesome nutrition? Will there be inclusion of table eggs in the Anganbadi programmes.Will there be poultry farmers lucerative subsidy schemes Modi Govt. bring in the coming days to boost the egg production in the country ? Will Poshan Abhiyaan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship mission to ensure a malnutrition-free India by 2022, dare to be different?
As for something that extension agents can facilitate, rather than governments, another key way to promote the consumption of eggs in women and children is to target women through educational trainings centered on cooking and nutrition. Since women often have the gendered social role of providing food for their families, workshops could teach women the nutritional benefits of eggs and also how to cook eggs in local dishes. This might be an effective way to increase the demand for eggs and incorporate them into local norms, though the problem of high cost still remains.
The FAO Forum offered up a few ideas for solutions to combat the high cost of chicken feed that makes eggs expensive to purchase. Several people noted that innovative methods — such as converting food waste into chicken feed or switching to locally-available feed, such as sweet potatoes — might lower this input cost. Additionally, there is also a strong argument that governments should recognize the important influence they can have on improving nutrition and public health and therefore subsidize egg production.
All in all, I do believe that eggs can or should be the entire solution, I do believe that eggs can be extremely helpful in combatting malnutrition and hunger in developing regions.
We must develop strategies that can be sustained in the long-term, with welfare of layer farmers and consumers too.
Reference:On request.
