Nutrifest

NUTRIFEST - “A festival for nutritional awareness” is organized every year at the centre to create awareness on the importance of right and balanced diet in growing children. This year it was celebrated on Thursday the 8^th March 2024 between 11.00 am and 1.30 pm. This is the seventeenth year that we are organizing this festival. The event is specially designed to focus on the importance of nutritional intervention for special children. “Healthy Foods, Healthy Kids”.

Every year a theme is selected and a cookery competition on the theme for the mothers takes place. The theme for this year is “ Incorporation of Millets rich in Micronutrients in daily diet ". The age of the children to whom we cater is birth to 4 years, 4 - 8 years 8-15 years. Mothers will have to keep in mind these age groups and prepare a recipe for daily diet, for a particular age group incorporating Millets. The dishes will be displayed in the prayer hall and will be judged.

The dishes will be judged on the basis of their :

• Innovative and easily preparable recipes
• Presentation of the dish
• Charts depicting the nutritive value and role of traditional recipes in giving the children a balanced diet

The Judges of this year were :

• Dr. Nikhila Sharma a leading Paediatrician in Chennai. She qualified for MBBS and DCH from Madras Medical College (MMC), and has worked in Railway Hospital, Perambur and Childs Trust Hospital Nungambakkam, after which she has been into Private Practice for more than 40 years. She has been featured in TV shows and Tamil Magazines like Mangaiyar Malar an Ananda Vikatan. She is the Author of a book, "Amma Naan Nalama".


• Mrs. Rama Narayanan – She has twenty five years’ experience in Community and Public Health Nutrition, with expertise in the area of maternity and early childhood. Core competencies include community interventions, capacity building of grass root functionaries, participatory research with people and academic research with policy analysis for addressing under nutrition. Specific skill sets are implementation and evaluation of projects, process documentation, designing training programmes for grass root functionaries and communities, design of research studies, analysis and paper writing with focus on public policies. Held the position of Ford Chair for Women and Food Security at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation for over 5 years. Was an advisor with M S Swaminathan Research Foundation as a nutritionist for over 10 years.


• Mrs. G Deepa - Nutritionist with 10 experience. She has worked as a Counsellor at Indira Gandhi National Open University in in Applied Physiology and Clinical Therapeutic Nutrition, Treasurer – Indian Dietetic Association, Convenor – Indian Dietetic Association Chennai Chapter. She has presented a paper on the influence of diet on chidlfen suffering from chronic diarrhoea in the Indian Journal of Research in Human Science.


• Mrs. Krishnakumari Jayakumar - After her graduation in Sociology krishnakumari was captivated with millets which she used for her family members. She slowly started reading about them and soon gained indepth knowledge in millets. After three cookbooks on millets, Krishna Kumari is now working on her fourth which will have recipes of heirloom varieties of rice. BY now she had become known as Millet Queen. Her third book was an English translation of the first two books. Tracing her journey into the world of writing, Krishna Kumari took part in a recipe writing competition conducted by a Tamil magazine, which she won and later freelanced for the same magazine. She was noticed by Podhigai channel of Doordarshan for which she did a programme. Now she is a regular on all tamil channels and plays a great part in promoting millets in a big way.

Earlier Dr. P. Mohamed Nisha, Associate Professor, Department of Home Science, Jbas college for women Chennai 600018, arranged a demonstration of "introducing millets rich in micro nutrients for a balanced diet" on 27.02.2024 in our premises. 30 students of III BSc Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics accompanied by 2 staff from Home science department (Dr.P Mohamed Nisha and Mrs. Nousheen Irfana) participated in the demonstration and exhibited charts for the calorific value of millets and recipes for preparing tasty dishes for children. The mothers took guidance from her to participate in the cookery completion. On the day of the festival the parents with their children, teachers and other invitees gathered in the Prayer hall with a colourful array of dishes, vying with each other for taste and display. About 30 dishes came out on the table and the three judges were put to difficulty in selecting the dishes that were outstanding.

The day came to a close with the rolling shield being awarded to the best team and the judges’ comments on the display and improvements that can be brought in.