BMC schools to scrap junk food
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is turning a new leaf by deciding to scrap junk food in its school and replace it with healthier alternatives in the upcoming academic year.
The decision to introduce healthy food items such as fruit plates, soups, palak idlis is a reaction to the rise in children with obesity who are at risk of developing diabetes and hypertension.
“Lifestyle diseases are no more restricted to the elderly. We are seeing a lot of younger people with the diseases and thus corrective steps by introducing dietary changes at school and college level is needed,” said Manisha Mahiskar, additional municipal commission, BMC.
According to medical experts with 50 per cent of the people diabetes can be avoided by lifestyle changes, alone, which can help in reducing multi-organ damage as a result of the disease. “Apart from providing medical services to those already suffering, we aim to reduce the burden of these non communicable diseases (NCD). For school
children we are devising board games to attract them towards healthy food,” said Ms Mahiskar. “To start with we will
first change the menu of the BMC canteen,” she added. The Indian Dietetic Association (IDA) has helped more than 200 schools and colleges to shift towards healthy canteen food. “Most schools are supportive to the idea. We also teach parents to rustle healthy food to overall improve the child’s health,” said Salomi Benjamin, past president of IDA who is associated with Nair Hospital in central Mumbai.
Civic officials said that mall culture and lack of physical activity among children is to be blamed for the rise in childhood obesity.
For better compliance to treatment, the civic body has decided to send SMSes to patients registered with them on monthly basis reminding them about their medicines.
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