Nutrition Awarness

World Food Summit in 1996:”Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

This indicates that food security has four key elements:

  • Availability
  • Accessibility
  • Utilization
  • Stability

Therefore, sustainable production of food is the first pillar of food security. Worldwide around 795 million people are undernourished globally including 780 million in the developing regions due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty (FAO, 2015). And the most horrible thing, six million children die of hunger every year – 17,000 every day. The Government of Nepal (GoN) prioritizes good nutrition and adequate food as fundamental rights of its citizens as reflected in the Constitution of Nepal 2015. In context of Nepal, three and half million people are considered moderately to severely food insecure. Nearly 31 out of the 75 districts in the country are considered “food deficit” (lack sufficient food to meet the needs of its population). Thirty seven percent of children under five years are bearing the brunt of chronic under nutrition and eleven percent are acutely undernourished in Nepal. Similarly, thirty eight percent of the population is not meeting their daily food energy requirements. Such realities are an impediment to our social-economic development which needs to be urgently overcome. There has been a slow but steady progress in improving the nutrition and food security status of the population, but there is still a lot to be achieved.

FSI Nepal

Nutrition Awareness Program aims to improve attitudes and practices known to improve nutritional outcomes of household members focusing more on women of reproductive age, pregnant women and lactating mother and children. Through this awareness program, the mothers are known about the nutritious food and its advantages and motivated to prepare and serve homemade nutritious food to children and family members that results household food and nutrition security.