What is your daily eating schedule? A morning cup of Coffee. You are either late or lazy hence binge eat on a packet of chips on your way to Work. During lunch,your taste buds crave for that extra tablespoon of salt, they say Follow your heart&you do it!! When you come home you practically eat anything served!! Some of this is imbibed in our daily schedule. How without even realising SALT,the invisible killer,penetrates in our daily lifestyle leading to several health related problems.
The challenge is to break this strong held foundation between salt&our taste buds. We cannot always build the future for our youth,but we can build our youth for the future,hence inculcating healthy eating habits is very important for a disease free future. Consuming more than 5 gms of salt a day is harmful for your body. We are on a mission to fight habits that are deep rooted-A rigid lifestyle,lack of awareness &exposure to packaged food high in salt make the task difficult but not impossible.
As part of this salt reduction program we are launching a pilot study with our key stakeholders-CCPCR,PGI Chandigarh reaching out to 15,000 school children in Chandigarh.During the National Nutrition Week in September,we will be carrying out pre-pilot campaign in 6 govt. and private schools, creating awareness amongst children about ill effects of salt which will be followed by interventions in 20 schools where children and their families will inculcate healthy eating habits in their lifestyle.
Out of the 6.1 million deaths in India in 2015, 3.4 million deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases indirectly caused due to bad eating habits. The preservation of health is the easier than the cure of a disease. The food consumed has a pivotal effect on the body, as well as, the mind.In long term,inculcalcating healthy eating habits and reducing salt will lead to pushing away the onset of chronic disease later in life and reduce the mortality due to cardiovascular diseases and renal failures