YES TO POSHAN makes good nutrition accessible

Vijayawada: P&G Health and Tata Trusts today announced the availability of its Nutritious Food recipe book for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children in the entire NTR district of Andhra Pradesh through 1,500+ Anganwadis, as part of their collaborative program ‘YES TO POSHAN’. The program, which aims to advance the nutritional status of women and children, was launched in June 2021 under P&G Health’s flagship Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative ‘SEHAT’.

The recipe book, available in English and Telugu, guides on how diet diversity and nutrition are crucial with an emphasis on local produce and contains detailed weekly meal plans. These recipes ensure that all 5 major food groups are included in all the meals. A baseline survey, conducted under ‘YES TO POSHAN’ revealed 10% of the children to be severely stunted and 61% of pregnant women and 33.3% of lactating mothers had abnormal BMIs. The survey also highlighted that many of the women and children had unbalanced diets, with higher levels of cereals, millets, roots, tubers, milk, and milk products, as compared to other food groups. To address these gaps, the recipe book was introduced to augment the impact of ‘YES TO POSHAN’.

Speaking about the initiative, Dilli Rao, District Collector, NTR district said, “I am happy to see that Tata Trusts’ ‘YES TO POSHAN’ program, supported by P&G Health has yielded promising results in the 5 villages of NTR district. I consider diet diversity and its promotion through the recipe book a concept of great value. We are pleased to now make it accessible to other parts of the district. I am confident of its success in achieving diet diversity and appropriate nutrition targets, in the days to come. Congratulations to P&G Health, Tata Trusts, Vijayavahini Charitable Foundation, and ICDS department for their efforts to create a model of anganwadi nutri gardens! We encourage programs like ‘YES TO POSHAN’ which serve a dual purpose of improving holistic wellbeing for women and children as well as creating employment opportunities for women in the district, helping them lead fulfilling lives.

Milind Thatte, Managing Director, P&G Health, commenting on the launch of the recipe book said, “‘YES TO POSHAN’, supported by P&G Health’s CSR program – ‘SEHAT’, aims to bring behavioural change across the 5 villages in the NTR district of Andhra Pradesh. The program’s frontline workers, known as ‘POSHAN Sakhis’ conduct community-level education sessions on nutrition to train and orient people on importance of dietary diversity. Glad to share that over 11000 people have been educated on good nutrition so far and we have 75 ‘nutri gardens’ across the 5 villages of NTR district. We deeply appreciate the District Collector's support to help increase access of the recipe books, which can help improve the nutritional content of food consumed by local communities”

Dr. Sujeet Ranjan, Associate Director – Nutrition , Tata Trusts said, “Tata Trusts initiated a comprehensive engagement to address the underlying causes of malnutrition with a focus on combating undernutrition in India in 2014-15.  The YES TO POSHAN Program designed by Tata Trusts and supported by P&G Health’s CSR program SEHAT, in the NTR district aims to address this by improving dietary intake and ensuring diet diversity via the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) platform. We hope that, together, with P&G Health’s SEHAT initiative, the Department of Home Sciences, and Govt of Andhra Pradesh’s Department of Women’s Development and Child Welfare, we can facilitate a healthy tomorrow”.
 

‘YES TO POSHAN’ aspires to reduce malnutrition and poor diet among pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under two years at a grass root-level. It complements the POSHAN Abhiyaan scheme created by the Indian government to address issues such as stunted growth, undernutrition, and lower birth weight amongst women and children.