The National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) have launched ‘FeFA Girls’, an initiative to tackle malnutrition among adolescent girls.
The aim is to prepare diet-based approaches to improve haemoglobin and blood iron levels in girls, and to generate scientific evidence on nutritional benefits of groundnut and pearl millet on human health.
Tie-up with Telangana
The two institutes will work with the Telangana government in rolling out the project. FeFA Girls (Iron For Adolescents with Fe being the scientific symbol for iron and, FA, for Adolescent) will target girls in the age group of 16-19 years from social welfare hostels in Telangana.
“We will study and address iron deficiency and poor dietary fibre intake of these girls,” Peter Carberry, Director-General of Icrisat, said. “Our approach is to use practical food-based solutions using crops rich in iron and dietary fibres that have been shown to improve the gut microbiome composition.”
“Adolescent girls suffering from mild to moderate anaemia will get high-dietary fibre-containing natural nutritional supplements in the form of a peanut-pearl millet bar every day for three months in government residential hostels in Telangana,” R Hemalatha, Director of NIN, she said.
Similarly, an initiative to understand the effect of national iron-folic acid (IFA) supplementation programme on gut modulation and iron status among adolescents too will be taken up.This will assess the effect of daily iron-folic acid supplementation (for a period of three months) on the gut microbiota composition and function of adolescent girls
Original post on The Hindu Business Line
