FOOD HABITS And MENTAL HEALTH

FOOD HABITS And MENTAL HEALTH- Shalini Pathak 

In today's fast-paced world, maintaining healthy food habits is more crucial than ever. Good nutrition  is foundational to overall well-being, influencing everything from physical health to mental sharpness. This article delves into the importance of healthy food habits, the benefits they offer, and practical tips for integrating them into daily life.

The connection between food habits and mental health has garnered increasing attention in recent years. Numerous studies highlight how our diet can significantly affect our mental well-being. Children’s mental health also depend on what they are consuming. Establishing healthy food habits in children is crucial for their growth, development, and long-term health. The dietary choices made during childhood can influence a child's health trajectory, affecting their physical, cognitive, and emotional well-being.

1. Understanding Healthy Food Habits:

* Consuming a variety of foods in the right proportions to obtain essential nutrients.

* Eating at regular intervals to maintain energy levels and metabolic function.

* Managing portion sizes to avoid overeating and ensure proper nutrition.

Food Habit is the foundation of lifelong health:

Adequate nutrition supports proper growth, bone development, and muscle formation. Nutrient￾rich foods provide essential vitamins and minerals crucial for these processes. Proper nutrition enhances cognitive functions, including memory, attention, and learning abilities. A balanced diet strengthens the immune system, reducing the risk of infections and illnesses. Nutrients such as vitamin C, vitamin D, and antioxidants play key roles in immune function.

 2.Mindful Eating:

 * Paying attention to the taste, texture, and smell of food can enhance the eating experience and help prevent overeating. Mindful eating encourages a greater appreciation for food and can reduce stress and emotional eating.

* Being aware to body's hunger and fullness signals can prevent overeating and promote a balanced diet, contributing to better mental health.

* Focusing on unprocessed foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and proteins, can support mental well-being by providing essential nutrients and promoting overall health. Drinking enough water throughout the day is also important for maintaining mental alertness and a positive mood. Even mild dehydration can impair cognitive performance and exacerbate feelings of anxiety and stress.

Establishing Healthy Eating Behaviours:

Children who develop healthy eating habits are more likely to make nutritious choices as adults. Parents play a significant role in shaping these behaviours.

* Children imitate the eating habits of adults around them. Parents should model healthy eating behaviours by consuming a variety of nutrient-dense foods.

* Creating a positive food environment at home encourages children to try new foods. Offering a variety of healthy options and involving children in meal preparation can foster a love for nutritious foods.Healthy food habits contribute to mental and emotional well-being in children. Balanced meals with complex carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy fats provide steady energy levels, preventing mood swings and irritability.Healthy food habits are essential for maintaining overall health and well-being. The link between food habits and mental health is undeniable. By embracing a balanced diet, regular meal timing, and mindful eating practices, individuals can experience improved physical health, better mental clarity, and enhanced energy levels. Making small, sustainable changes to eating habits can lead to long-term benefits and a healthier lifestyle.

Healthy food habits are essential for the overall well-being of children. Proper nutrition supports growth, cognitive development, immune function, and emotional health. Making nutritious food enjoyable and involving children in the process can create lasting healthy habits that benefit them throughout their lives.

 EAT HEALTHY, THINK HEALTHY, BE HEALTHY 

MYOPIA; MATTER TO BE ADDRESSED

Myopia or short sightedness is becoming a growing concern all over the world.Clinically, it is defined as spherical equivalent refraction less than or equal to -0.5 Diopter. But for common to understand we could say myopia as a condition where one couldnot clearly see things at far while there is no issue in seeing objects near to eye.Today nearly20% of global population suffers from myopia.Globally there is an expected increase in people suffering from myopiai.e, to rise upto 50% of entire world population by 2050. Currently refractive errors hold the reason for 1/5^th of total blindness in the world,amongst it myopia leads the list. 

It is understood that myopia affect the quality of life of the individual, but the intensity varies according to the age of the individual,magnitude of the disease,geographical setting (i.e. rural or urban) as well as political commitment of the country. Regarding the age, for a young child inorder to pursue education the audiovisual spatial integration plays an important role, while for an old aged individual the consequence of such a disease is comparatively low. When in comes to geographical setting, urban areas has tertiary level healthcare facilities which provides quality intervention while primary level healthcare is being the only option for rural residents. Adding to it, there is a huge economic divide between rural and urban population in India.

If myopia is causing learning disabilities for children at one end, the adults suffer with inability to work with maximum potential at the middle while old aged find it difficult to do the activities of daily living at the other extreme.But there are associated symptoms like headache which bother everyone irrespective of age group they belong to. Irritation in the eyes followed by rubbing, frequent blinking of eyes, blurred vision, eye straining are some of the concomitants of myopia which are often left unnoticed. Apart from these symptoms dry eyes, foreign body sensation are also found to be reported by patients. Rarely some patients also presents with squinting.

Proper maintanence of eye health is essential for preventing myopia though it cannot not completely help to attain it. Studies suggest there is a genetical background that could be traced back to the cause of myopia atleast in some cases. Consanginous marriage, X linked chromosomal disease pattern etc are being reported as causes for myopia in some regions of the country. There are some eye diseases which found to be associated with myopia such as glaucoma,retino-choroidal diseases etc.Syndromic relationship with thalassemia also seen with myopia.

Though these kind of genetic influence are there for myopia, more common risk factors are environment related. People who stay indoor regularly found to have more chance for having the disease. On the other side people who stay outdoor often presents with myopia less in number. Researchers suggest this is due to indirect relationship i.e, people who stay indoor use near sight frequently more than people at outdoors. Near work is another main reason contributing to refraction errors like myopia. People engaged in tailoring, gold smith and similar jobs which require frequent involvement of near sight increase the burden of myopia. When it comes to computer or screen based jobs too, continous near sight being regarded as the main reason.

 

An interesting finding related to myopia is that of with education. The higher a person getting educated, the chances that individual become myopic increases. The other important risk factor for myopia is increased screen time. In this digital era, people use screen for education as well as entertainment. This will make an upshoot in the number of people becoming myopic unless properly eye health is maintained.

 

Preventive measures regarding myopia is far easy to follow yet frequently neglected. There are measures like Bates excercises, Periodic Near to far shifting , palming , solarization , eye squeezing ,eye circling , eye massaging etc . Apart from that traditional measures like Trataka Yoga Kriya are also found to be useful in preventing myopia. These measures help in muscles relaxation in and around eye. Once diagnosed with myopia too, people could follow these measures inorder to control rapid prognosis of the disease.

Another challenge to decrease the rapidity of myopic eye is the stigma towards spectacles. Often people believe wearing glass has got cosmetic disfigurement. Though government provides spectacles through national health programme to prevent blindness, this act as a barrier to achieve the goal of preventing blindness. Poor people cannot afford switching to contact lens as an alternative to spectacles while rich people do so. In case of contact lens too, measures should be taken to keep the hygiene as well as to be distant from inflammable environment.

There are measures like Photo Refractive Keratectomy (PRK), Laser InsituKeratomilensis (LASIK) and Femtosecond laser assisted small incision lenticular extractions which are used for avoiding spectacle usage. Though these procedures wont cure per se rather help to focus light by manipulating lens structure.

The rate at which people presents with short sightedness would be very rapid in this digital era , if proper eye health is taught at schools, home and offices. There should be regulations from the side of parents regarding screen usage of small kids, as increased screen time not only causes refractive errors, but psychological conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Addiction tendency too. With organized efforts greater public action could be initiated in order to control the rapid increase in the number of myopia patients of the country. On Regular basis HEEALS organize Eye Care Campaign in schools. Where Volunteer and Interns show how to protect eyes and eye care importance.

DR THAREEKH BASHEER

MPH SCHOLAR

UNIVERSITY OF HYDERBAD

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NUTRITION AT SCHOOL

Nutrition is the intake of food, considered in relation to the body's dietary needs and a

balanced diet, together with physical activity, is a cornerstone of good health. The

international organisations are increasingly focusing their efforts on nutrition as they

underscore the importance of it, not only on at the individual level but as an asset for the

sustainable development of a country . As Ban Ki Moon stated: “Nutrition  is both a maker and a marker of development. Improved nutrition is the platform for progress in health,education, employment, empowerment of women and the reduction of poverty and inequality, and can lay the foundation for peaceful, secure and stable societies”. 

Nutrition is therefore a very complex and multifaceted issue as it encompasses a broad range of topics and, taken form a Sustainable Development Goals perspective, can be taken as the focal point from which one can address every one of those. Unfortunately a big share of the world population faces issues related to malnutrition, this being defined by the WHO as the condition related to deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients. Whilst many western countries are facing a growing burden of Obesity and overweight individuals, the other side of the coin is represented by those developing countries affected by undernutrition and micronutrient-related malnutrition, with 90 per cent of the developing world’s chronically undernourished (stunted) children living in Asia and Africa. 

Under nutrition is defined as the outcome of insufficient food intake and repeated infectious diseases. It includes being underweight for one’s age, too short for one’s age (stunted), dangerously thin for one’s height (wasted) and deficient in vitamins and minerals (micronutrient malnutrition). According to Unicef, more than one third of the world’s children who are wasted live in India, with the rural communities having the highest rates of undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. Other nutrition issues faced by many underprivileged communities is Iron-deficiency-Anaemia (IDA), for which India earned by far the world sad record, and Protein Energy Malnutrition (PEM). The Indian government recognizes the importance of an adequate nutrition in order to end the vicious circle of poverty and its paramountcy for development, as noted in the national nutrition policy. The same document underlines the importance of nutrition education and the fact that schools are an ideal setting for that. Reason why the Mid-may meal scheme is been designed. Unfortunately, as noted in the previous article the shortcomings about the implementation of the programme are manifest and if we take them from a “nutritional” angle we notice that the programme failed to provide nutritious food as per programme guidelines.Therefore the question is: 

What can be done to remedy to these

shortcomings? The ministry of Human Resource Development highlights the importance of community participation for the successful implementation of the scheme, in order to

ensure an effective monitoring at the local level and underlining the importance of the

participation of NGOs which work at a grassroots level, having a hands-on approach to

such issues and dealing directly with the problems faced by the communities, thus creating a dialogue between those and the government. 

Therefore NGOs such as Heeals can be paramount for the remedying of the government shortcomings regarding the implementation of programmes such as the MDM scheme; tackling issues such as Infrastructure implementation, nutrition education and nutritional balanced meal provision. It is paramount to empower voiceless and unprivileged communities in order to buttress their rights as the issues that their facing are not an accident or a natural outcome of their actions, but they are socio-economical phenomena engendered by asymmetrical power relations and lack of access to the most basic resources and agency. 

As demonstrated by Amartya Sen, hunger and food insecurity are not related to food availability but to the lack of access to it on the part of certain individuals, and if we are to support the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, we have to support and empower those people whom are more in need, making their voices audible as well as endorsing a pragmatic solidarity” approach. As Paul Farmer stated, the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong in the world.

-        By -Andrea Angeli

WASH Intern Coordinator

Source

1 Global Panel on Agriculture and Food systems fo Nutrition; http://glopan.org/sites/default/files/

SDGPolicyBrief.pdf

2http://ucx3x320eshgjxppibt1rqg0.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/SUNMovement-

Strategy-and-Roadmap-Ban-Ki-moon-message.pdf

3 UNSCN; http://glopan.org/sites/default/files/Downloads/SDGPolicyBriefSummary.pdf

4 WHO; https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malnutrition

5 UNICEF; https://unicef.in/Story/1124/Nutrition

6 UNICEF; https://www.unicef.org/progressforchildren/2006n4/undernutritiondefinition.html

7 UNICEF; https://unicef.in/Story/1124/Nutrition

8 WHO; http://www.who-seajph.org/article.asp?

issn=2224-3151;year=2018;volume=7;issue=1;spage=18;epage=23;aulast=Rai ; https://

www.hospitalmanagement.net/comment/anemia-prevalence-nears-40-india/; https://

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/51-of-indian-women-aged-15-49-anaemic-most-in-world-study/

articleshow/61538152.cms

9https://wcd.nic.in/sites/default/files/nnp_0.pdf

10 see “Food and Hygiene” article.

11Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development; https://

elementaryeducation.tripura.gov.in/mid-day-meal; see “Food Hygiene” article.

12 Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School

Education and Literacy; http://mdm.nic.in/mdm_website/Files/Guidelines/

3.MDM1%2021.09.2010.pdf

13 Amartya Sen, “Poverty and famines”, 1981, Oxford India Paperbacks

14ICESCR

15 For the concept of “pragmatic

Fighting hunger and malnutrition: Is the Midday meal scheme really effective?

In the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India is a party, India has committed to yielding “adequate nutritious foods" for children. Proper nutritional support is fundamental for children from their birth through adolescence, as it has a profound impact on their ability to grow, learn, and thrive. It is a well-documented fact that chronic malnutrition impairs the physical as well as cognitive development in growing children. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme is a school meal program implemented in 2001 by the Government of India. It was an improvement over the existing nutrition program which guaranteed food grains to children enrolled in Government and Government-aided schools. It has been initiated to address the issue of classroom hunger in school-aged children by providing a cooked meal every day. It is designed to improve the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide.The program supplies free lunches on working days for children in primary and upper primary classes in government, government aided, local body and alternate innovative education centers. 

One of the first surveys on the Mid-Day Meal, by Dreze and Goyal (2003), highlighted several good consequences of the scheme, such as improved attendance rate, child nutrition and social equality. Interviews revealed that the introduction of the MDMS improved not only the attendance of children, but also made them more likely to stay after the lunch break; it has also proved helpful in eradicating hunger. In areas where hunger is endemic, the Mid-Day Meal might be the only thing saving children from chronic malnutrition.The Mid-Day Meal Scheme has played an important role enhancing enrollment, attendance in schools, and in improving socialization among classes. To that effect, it has surely done its part in helping eradicate hunger. Moreover, it gave women the chance to get employed. 

The program has undergone many changes since its launch. With the enactment of the National Food Security Act in 2013, the nutritional content of food (calorie and protein content requirement has since been increased for MDMS) has become an integral part of the right to food in the country. Moreover, from the year 2009 onwards the following changes have been made to improve the implementation of the scheme: I. Food norms have been revised to ensure balanced and nutritious diet to children of upper primary group by increasing the quantity of nutritional ingredients II. Cooking cost (excluding the labour and administrative charges) has been revised III.The honorarium for cooks and helpers was paid from the labour and other administrative charges per child per day provided under the cooking cost. Moreover, specific norms for engagement of cookcum-helper have been made.This shows that the scheme is muddled in the game of numbers rather than going into the qualitative aspects of the food served. 

Even if the Mid-Day Meal Scheme is an innovative scheme to get children from poor socioeconomic status to enroll for elementary education it has been facing serious problems. This is mainly due to the poor quality of food served because of inadequate infrastructure and adverse impact on children’s health & subsequent. Secondly, the government’s focus is on reach not on quality but quantity. The government only concentrates on statistics as to how many number of schools they are able to cover and provide food. They don't give importance to quality. In fact, most of the children who study in village government schools are very poor and end up eating this as their only meal for the day. There is no one to inspect the quality of the food being served to them. 

In Bihar on July 16 20013 23 children lost their lives after eating their Mid-Day Meal due to poisoning because the oil used for cooking was kept in was previously used to store pesticide. There are many such unreported cases where students who eat this meal have reported of dysentery and ill health. So parents and children fearing safety have declined to have food served in these Mid-Day Meals . The MDMS guidelines dictate that the meal should be of good quality, nutritious, tasty, digestible, and varying from day to day to ensure variety in the menu. Moreover, high standards of hygiene and cleanliness are expected to be maintained during the cooking and serving of the meal, along with transparency in accounts. Additionally, states having indulged in diversion of funds meant for the scheme, for instance providing less rice to schools. Another problem related to the Mid-Day Meal Scheme is afflicted with large-scale caste and gender-based discrimination. In some places the upper caste children refuse to eat food cooked by lower class women and backward classes students are made to sit separately from the others. 

Lastly, it emerged during the study that though 99 per cent of the schools had facilities for operation of the MDMS, and 97 per cent of them provide cooked meal during most the days, yet in about 11 per cent of the villages, the food was served only a few days a week, while in 2 per cent of the cases, it was served very rarely. In 38 per cent of the cases, the prescribed menu was not followed and the quality of food was also allegedly poor. 

HEEALS is directly involved in implementing hand washing with soap in the Mid Day scheme in children’s daily routine. It is working on WASH (water, sanitation and Hygiene) projects in seven states works in slum schools, schools in unauthorized colonies, orphanages and refugee camps. Through spreading education on sanitation and personal hygiene and delivering basic hand washing material, HEEALS is working to increase the attendance rates of pupils in schools, reduce the number of diseases and deaths and improve the health of people across Indian society. Moreover, another HEEALS commitment is to promote children cooperation between genders and castes.

-Bene 

WASH & MH Intern Coordinator 

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CLOSE LINKS BETWEEN A BALANCED DIET AND MENSTRUAL HYGIENE

The strength of the relationship between a correct nutrition and a healthy

menstrual condition is often undervalued and unknown. Sometimes, in fact,

the consequences of malnutrition are pervasive and massive but also hidden.

This is why the malnutrition, specially concerning under nutrition, represents

a global challenge that requires both social and economic efforts.

Malnutrition can be seen as an outcome of bad interaction between different

agents, such as: agricultural food system, environment, health system, and

the individual-household decision making process. It is fundamental that in an

enabling environment, completed with specific intervention and programmes,

woman are allowed to have access to safe food, social safety nets, physical

and mental care, health and family planning services and water sanitation.

Moreover, all those factors contributes to the empowerment of women,

increasing their acknowledge and consciousness about nutrition and hygienic

issues.

A big role in women's empowerment is played by agriculture. In fact,

agriculture not only has effects on expenditures and consumption of food, but

also has a strong link with women's employment and their own nutrition and

health conditions. A problem related with agriculture, as findings shows, is

that farmers tend to sell more expensive and nourishing products, retaining

less expensive cereals for domestic consumption. This is why is necessary to

support an environmentally sustainable food production that includes a

diversification of products, allowing the availability of nutrient-dense foods

and small-scale livestock.

Speaking more particularly about woman’s health, we should consider the

age group between 15 and 25 years old, the younger women group among

whom fertility is more concentrated, who face the largest disadvantage in

India. This is considered a problem especially in relation to the pre-pregnant

underweight condition in India, in fact scholars affirms that approximately

42.2% of pre-pregnant women have their Body Mass Index (BMI) under

18.5kg/m2, this means that a strong percentage of Indian women before

pregnancy suffers from underweight and malnutrition.

But how this reflects on women's life? First of all, it has implication in work

capacity and productivity, regardless the work they carry out. It means that in

a work environment women in this condition may be considered less

productive. Another reflection implicates the social-physical and cognitive

sphere. Good nourishment allows developing all spheres in the most

appropriate way, in order to improve individual benefit. Finally, a very

important reflection of nourishment in women's life is related to the fetal and

child nutrition and development. An improvement of consciousness and

awareness in this field not only helps to ameliorate maternal healthcare and

safety, but also may largely reduce mortality in childhood and child's

undernourishment. In this sense, an improvement may have great reflection

on new generations learning capacity, improving the whole society.

But what does balanced diet means? A balanced diet is a correct

consumption of a large variety of food, which means that is appropriate to

consume a right quantity of various nutritious daily. An inappropriate diet may

cause healthy problems such as micronutrient deficiency, like a lack of

important vitamins and minerals, generating various types of symptoms.

In conclusion, all those evidences bring us to consider how much important

are good and healthy diet habits, balancing correctly all nourishments, in

order to ameliorate woman’s health and lifestyle.

-Grandoni Laura

Anemia in India

Anemia has been plaguing the Indian population at incredibly high rates for decades, and while the government has been trying to implement programs to lower the rate of this deficiency among Indian people, there have been ongoing calls for a more effective effort to be made. According to the World Health Organization, 63.7% of Indian women and 22.3% of Indian men were anemic in 1958. In 2016 these numbers had dropped to 53.1% for women and had risen to 22.7% for men. So while it could be argued that the public health effort has been helpful at least for women, it is also very plausible that there are outside factors affecting these numbers, especially because we see a slight increase in men suffering from anemia. In fact, while government programs do provide iron supplement pills for children and pregnant women (low iron is one of the main causes of anemia) very few people are actually receiving these supplements, and of the people who do receive them, even fewer are taking them regularly due to lack of understanding about what they are.¹ 

So, the question remains now... how can you tell if you are anemic? And if you are, how can you treat it? How much cause for concern is there really? First of all, let’s talk about what anemia actually is. There are different levels of anemia deficiency, so someone could have mild anemia and never even realize it. In more severe cases, anemia can seriously interfere with one’s day-to-day activities and even be life threatening. When someone is anemic, it means that they carry smaller amounts of something called haemoglobin in their blood. Haemoglobin helps carry oxygen through your veins to reach your organs and the rest of your body.²

Some common symptoms of anemia are fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and numbness in extremities. If you are concerned that you may have anemia, reach out to your doctor. They can ask you to get a blood test which will reveal your red blood count cell and tell you your haemoglobin levels- this will be under the blood test section called CBC (Complete Blood Count). Since one of the main causes of anemia is low iron levels, a good way to avoid this deficiency is through a healthy diet including lots of leafy dark green vegetables like spinach, soybeans and peanuts, and if you’re non-veg red lean meats and organ meats. Citrus fruits and other foods with lots of Vitamin C are also great for keeping anemia at bay. If you are already eating lots of these foods on a regular basis and are concerned you may be anemic, reach out to your doctor. While iron deficiency is the most common cause, anemia can also be genetic or may be caused by parasites. ³

Remember, in most cases, anemia is mild. If are anemic and your symptoms are mild, likely all you will need to do is adjust your diet or add a supplement. Whether or not you have anemia, it is important to be aware of the symptoms so that if you or a loved one begin to experience them you will know what to do for relief. If you have a teenage daughter or know a woman who is pregnant, be sure that you speak to them about anemia. These groups are at high risk: menstruating girls because of the blood loss and pregnant women because they need to support a whole extra little person with nutrient-rich blood.

HEEALS is trying to raise awareness about anemia because it is such a big issue in India. If you would like to volunteer with HEEALS or learn more about what we do, reach out to us at : communications@heeals.org and don’t forget to check out our social media!


-Rachel 
wash & intern coordinator 

^source

^{Picture : HEEALS} 

¹ http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/making-india-anaemia-free-can-india-achieve-what-it-has-failed-to-for-70-years-39256

² https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-anemia.aspx

³ https://food.ndtv.com/health/anemia-in-indian-women-causes-symptoms-and-steps-for-prevention-1410155