Persisting Nutrition Problems of the Country and the Need of Newer Approaches for Intervention

Our country has been facing different nutrition problems since the eariy decades of the last century. Nearly fifty per cent of Indian population who are poor face the nutrition deficiency problems covering energy, protein, calcium, vitamin A, iron, riboflavin, iodine, zinc and selenium. Dietary intake of these nutrients are generally inadequate to meet their requirements, leading to clinical or functional deficiencies of nutrients. Initially that is, before 1950 much of nutrition research was centred on identifying clinical nutrition deficiency diseases and their treatment. Most of the nutritional deficiency diseases were encountered as clinical cases in hospitals and their clinical description and amelioration used to receive emphasis.