TOPIC

NUTRITION SECURITY:
A FOOD SYSTEM APPROACH.

RITIKA NARWAL
PGDDPHN
LADY IRWIN COLLEGE.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
INTRODUCTION:
Physical, economic, environmental and
social access to balanced diet in a
population.
Nutrition security is achieved for a
household when secure access to food is
coupled with a sanitary environment,
adequate health services, and adequate
care to ensure a healthy life for all.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
Nutrition security requires the following inputs:
(i) Physical: This means the physical and actual
presence of food/food grains and not just on
papers/documents which can be manipulated
by the person who is in charge of distributing
food grains.
(ii) Economic: Purchasing power- every household
of a community should have enough money to
purchase the ingredients/items of a balanced
diet.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
(iii) Environmental: The population should have a
clean and hygienic sanitation facilities, proper
health facilities and should have access to clean
water.
(iv) Social: There should be gender equality in
terms of distribution of food items in a
household, every family member should get
adequate amount of food as required.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
There are following systems of the nutrition security:
1. Agri-food system- This system is a main operator of
nutrition security, which affects one’s own choices,
lifetime chances, decision making skills and all the
future outcomes. The character played by agribusiness
in nutrition security is in dynamic states of economic
growth. Growth in agribusiness is distinguished by
distribution of people in a community i.e. some people
are in corporate, and firms and supply chains etc.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
This implies that people being in different settings are
moving more and more towards urbanization and less
and less towards the agriculture.

There is a few population left in the field of agriculture

as compared to the population that is moving towards
urbanization, i.e. corporate jobs, where workload is
more but the pay is not very good, which indirectly
impacts the purchasing power of the population.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
Health and Disease system:
Limited access to clean and safe drinking water,
limited access to nutritious foods and limited
purchasing power can have a direct impact on the
health of an individual/population. Adequate and
appropriate nutrition is required to proper
functioning of body i.e. malnutrition can occur if
there is limited access to clean, safe food.
Malnutrition can sometimes be fatal.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
This system implies that a population should be healthy, nutrition can
help the population in doing so. The prevalence of these
malnutrition is also higher in slum areas of developing countries
where problems of nutrition security exists. Malnutrition results in
weak immune system, poor healing and an increased risk of
diseases.
Malnutrition affects children the same way or maybe more severely,
each year many children die of malnutrition. Infections or
malnutrition diseases decrease productivity of an individual which
affects a household’s income.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
3. ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEM:
Environmental system has a direct impact on
maintenance of potential agricultural food
production, accessibility to clean, safe water for
both agricultural purposes as well as for human
consumption and for other uses of water. Every
household should have access to proper health
facilities.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
Every household in a population should have
access to proper sanitation, clean and hygienic
cooking practices should be included, there
should be proper distribution of food grains
under several running policies and programs.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS ENSURING
NUTRITION SECURITY.
1. The Public Distribution system (PDS) or Targeted
Public Distribution system (TPDS)
This program was initiated by British rulers. In 1984,
GOI launched the ministry of food and supplies, which
has the motive of opening FPS i.e. Fair Price Shops
where household commodities are available at
subsidized rates.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS):
In June 1997, the GOI improvised PDS as TPDS which
focused on the targeted population i.e. population
who are Below Poverty Line (BPL) and were not able
to purchase household commodities even at
subsidized rates.
At present the GOI is providing 35kg of food grains to
65.2 million families who are under the Below
Poverty Line (BPL).
 NUTRITION SECURITY
2. Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY):
This scheme was launched in 2000, with the motive
to provide food based helps to poor households
and to ensure food and nutrition security for all
residing in rural/urban areas.
This scheme provides food grains at the price of
35kg/family/month.
Different ration cards are distributed through which
the population can purchase the food grains at
subsidized rates.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
3. National Food For Work Program (NFFP)
This program was initiated with the focus of distribution
of food grains as a part of wages which in turn would
improve the nutritional status of the community.
More than 5kg of food grains should be made available
to the laborers with a minimum of 25% wages to be
paid in cash in exceptional cases.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
4. The Right To Food Act:
Initiated in August 2009, this ensures the
distribution of at least 25kg of grains at RS.3/kg
to every household who were identified as
Below Poverty Line (BPL) .
This also ensures complete eradication of all social
discriminations.
This scheme created awareness about breastfeeding
and helped the community.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
5. Integrated Child Development Scheme
(ICDS):
This scheme was launched in 1975 which supplies
a complete package of services i.e. supplementary
nutrition, immunization, health check-ups, referral
services, and nutrition and health education.
The program aims to arrange the support needed
by rural women with the help of anganwadi
workers.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
ICDS center is a place where anganwadi workers
and women/mothers/expectant mothers meet and
discuss about their needs during the special
stages of their lives that they are going through
i.e. pregnancy and lactation.
This is expected to expand its services to about 4.8
million mothers/expectant mothers and about 23
million children.
 NUTRITION SECURITY
CONCLUSION:
In the end we concluded that there is enough resources to
feed but not enough resources to fulfill one’s greed.
People of lower income group can be ensured food and
nutrition security if they register themselves to the
available policies and programs but for that also we as a
community need to create awareness among those
people about the currently running programs so that
they get the maximum benefit from that and should be
free from all types of malnutrition and deficiency
diseases.
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