New Delhi: In order to promote right nutrition and physical activity among school children, city-based National Institute of Nutrition is all set to bring out an 'Urja (Energy) Kit' to promote healthy lifestyle practises among adolescents, states a PTI report.
The kit, which will be brought out in next two months and circulated in schools across India, will contain information for children of Class VI to X on different nutritional aspects, balanced diet, micro-nutrients, macro-nutrients besides on the physical training activities, according to a senior scientist of NIN.
Most of the children (belonging to primary, mid and late adolescent phase) are not having the right kind of nutritional food. They are having junk foods, snacks like fried food and carbonated beverages daily, instead of having a proper nutritional diet, Dr D Raghunatha Rao, NIN scientist and HoD (Extension and Training Division) said.
"Nowadays, children are not having proper traditional food items as a routine diet. By avoiding right kind of food such children are finally ending up getting obese. To avoid this problem we want to promote right nutrition and physical activity among school children through this 'Urja kit'," Rao told PTI.
Through the kit, the school children will be advised on the importance of developing nutritional food habits, what foods they must consume and what foods they must avoid besides on doing physical activities, he said.
"It will inform adolescents on nutritious food they need to have and the kind of food they need to avoid including details on junk food," Rao explained, adding the kit also contains different physical activities schedules and on how many minutes they have to do physical training.
"Taking children as the target we have formed 'Urja clubs' in schools here. We have created these clubs in Kendriya Vidyalayas and we were successful in promoting nutritional education as well as importance of physical activities. We wanted to develop and distribute a kit also as part of this activity so that this programme sustains," Rao said.
"Each kit will contain 10-12 Information Education Communication (IEC) material with messages on nutrition, balanced food and importance of physical activity, along with posters in different local languages. Through NGOs, Health-line functionaries, educational institutions, we plan to distribute this kit in schools all over India," he said.
"The kit will be made available in both physical and soft copies and we expect it will lead to healthy lifestyle practices among the adolescent age group by making them understand need for adopting good nutritional food practices," Rao added.
