Drumstick ‘soup’: MP Govt anti-malnutrition drive’s scientific info wrong

Sravani Sarkar

NewsBits.in

Bhopal: What’s it with MP government and food meant for eradicating malnutrition? Already in controversy over denying eggs as nutritive food to anganwadi children, the state government seems to have landed itself into another soup.

It turns out so that the latest malnutrition eradication drive of the MP government under the new women and child development minister Archana Chitnis has its very scientific basis wrong.

The department, which is propagating drumstick as a ‘wonder food’ to combat malnutrition in this new campaign has the comparisons of the vegetable with well known nutritive food like oranges, milk and spinach totally off-range.

The campaign called ‘Surjane se Suposhan Abhiyan’ (Nutrition from Drumstick Campaign) would be launched from July 25 and the main focus is to identify families with malnourished children and gift them four saplings of drumstick and one of lemon each.

The aim is to ensure consumption of the drumstick and lemon with high nutritive values by the children and other family members.

During a recent review meeting the minister Archana Chitnis claimed (as mentioned in a state government release) that ‘in the pods of Surjane (drumstick), quantity of Vitamin C is 7 times more than Orange fruit, calcium 17 times more than milk and iron 25 times more than spinach.’

The same claim has been boldly made in the advertisements on the campaign featuring chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, released by state government (see advert).

But a quick look at the table of nutritive values of Indian foods issued by the National Institution of Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad, shows otherwise.

It shows that drumstick actually has Calcium 0.25 times lower than Buffalo milk and 0.15 times lower than cow milk, Iron content 0.15 times lower than Spinach and Vitamin C only 4 times higher than Oranges (see table).

Nutrition rights activist Sachin Jain of Vikas Samvad, who studied the chart, told NewsBits.in that there was no doubt about efficacy of drumstick as a nutritious food, but such gross wrong information being propagated officially undermines the seriousness of the government’s efforts.

“We are happy about the government propagating consumption of local nutritive food, but if the very nutritive values are projected so grossly wrong, it amounts to misleading the people,” Jain said.