On the pretext of offering sattvik food, doors are being closed to providing nutrient-dense foods like eggs to children.
Representational image. (iStock)
In February 2024, the Karnataka government announced the launch of a state-wide Annapoorna morning nutrition program through which all government school children in Karnataka would ‘receive their morning nutrition through a unique multi-nutrient supplement, SaiSure, specially customised for children’.
This initiative is in partnership with the Annapoorna trust, which apparently marks a major milestone in ‘Annapoorna’s efforts to nourish children and aid national development through food fortification and public-private partnerships.’
Further, this trust has been partnering with Kellogg’s since 2022 to provide Kellogg’s cereals and the SaiSure drink to children with the purpose of ‘nourishing’ people with the ‘range of offerings from Kellogg’s’ while also feeding ‘people in need’ along with ‘nurturing the planet, conserving natural resources, supporting farmers etc.’
Aligned with the similar purpose of serving underprivileged children, Annapoorna Trust’s collaboration with Kellogg’s will apparently positively benefit several children across rural geographies!
Anyone with an iota of common sense or concern for the country’s children would understand that Kellogg’s, which openly lists itself as an American multinational food manufacturing company that ‘produces cereal and convenience foods, like cookies, crackers, and toaster pastries’, is nothing more than an unethical junk food manufacturer.
It has played a huge role in pushing Western countries into long-term ill health with its ultra-processed, sugar-laden, cereal-heavy products and has rightly received flak from doctors and nutritionists.
What better alternative marketing strategy than shifting towards a country such as India? It would be even better to target one of the largest feeding programs in the country mandated for children! 7% of the adolescents in Karnataka are already overweight, and likely to rise further with these junk food interventions.
Almost every initiation of the Annapoorna trust, including this ‘breakfast seva’ is the ‘fruits of lengthy prayers of school staff and children’ and duly blessed at every step of the way by its founder Sri Madhusudan Sai who, not unsurprisingly, in his book ‘An Inner-view a day’ opines that sattvik foods are the highest kind of food while ‘the food that moves around should not be eaten at all’.
Clearly, all meats and eggs have been relegated to the ‘untouchable’ in this aspiration towards ‘higher living’, with casteist rejection of all animal source foods other than the ‘pure’ dairy. For a country that seems to seethe at even minor public assertions by minority religions, this is a blatant takeover of crucial public spaces by a caste-corporate nexus.
Organisations such as Annapoorna Trust and Akshaya Patra clearly understand the politics and economics of this. Dr. Kellogg, the founder of the breakfast cereal company, is himself anti-meat.
Milk provided to children under the Ksheera Bhagya scheme will include 10 grams of SaiSure powder. By their admission, 10 gm of the powder apparently provides 2 g of protein or 5 percent of the recommended dietary allowance.
It contains extruded rice powder, defatted soya flour, groundnut powder, moong dal, corn powder, barley, oat fibre, badam and added vitamins and minerals. This is nothing other than nutrient-poor, ultra-processed junk food.
A single egg can provide 8 gm of high-quality protein and several vitamins, minerals, and fats in a highly bioavailable form. However, on the pretext of sattvik, doors are being closed to providing such nutrient-dense foods to children.
Many grains, including millets, contain antinutrient compounds such as protease inhibitors, galacto-oligosaccharides, lectins, ureases, phytates, tannins, phenolics, and saponins, which can reduce the digestibility of nutrients and the absorption of minerals.
Most communities that traditionally use millets have identified means such as steeping, fermentation, malting, alkali or acid treatment, popping, roasting (dry or wet), parboiling, and drying to reduce the anti-nutrients. Malting and fermentation increase the amount of B vitamins and their availability.
However, ultra-processing at high temperatures further denatures the nutrients and converts them to unstable compounds. Kellogg’s, no matter how ‘noble’, cannot address malnutrition in the country whether affiliated with another ‘noble’ religious organisation or not.
The government has unquestionably accepted these dubious companies, and giving them paid access to crucial feeding programs for children should make us question whether these governments are fit to be making policies and decisions about the foods our children consume.
In Karnataka, among the 5-9 age group, 84 percent had consumed milk or curd, quite possibly due to the Ksheera Bhagya yojana, an appreciable initiative that has increased the diversity of the food plate in children while also offering much-needed proteins, vitamins, and other nutrients.
Nearly 96 percent of children in this age group in Karnataka are already consuming cereal, 90 percent are consuming pulses or beans, 67 percent are consuming fruits, 41 percent have consumed chicken, 81 percent roots and tubers, 58 percent eggs and 22 percent fish. (CNNS, 2016-18)
Among children aged 10-19, consumption at least once a week of milk or curd was 83%, pulses or beans was 84%, dark green leafy vegetables was 87%, roots and tubers 82%, fruits 75%, eggs 60%, fish 20%, chicken or meat 47% and cereal 98%. This data needs to give an idea of the quantities consumed.
Children could consume very tiny portions of these foods. Most children predominantly consume grains, roots and tubers, so any nutritional intervention should focus on other foods such as pulses, fruits, vegetables, milk, fish, eggs, meat, etc., which must strengthen children’s diets.
In Karnataka, the prevalence of iron deficiency among adolescents aged 10–19 years is 31 percent, of Vitamin A 8.5 percent, Vitamin D 15.6 percent, zinc 46.8 percent, Vitamin B12 46 percent and folate 70 percent.
Vitamin B12, also called cobalamin, is widely present in animal foods such as liver, eggs, milk, meat, and fish. Even its absorption requires a glycoprotein Intrinsic Factor (IF), which, in turn, requires proteins for its functioning.
Plant-based foods, whether fruit, vegetables, oils, pulses, herbs, cereals, millets, nuts or seeds, do not contain B12. This vitamin is important for DNA synthesis, cell division, blood cell formation, hormones, and neurotransmitters and also protects nerve fibres in the spinal cord and brain.
Decreased B12 leads to defective DNA synthesis and prevents the maturation of red blood cells, causing megaloblastic anaemia. Symptoms of B12 deficiency can manifest as mood swings, tingling hands and feet, coordination disorders, severe nerve (neuropathic ) pains, reduced concentration, dizziness, confusion, mouth ulcers, tremors, and visual impairments. It can often go undiagnosed, and early symptoms of tiredness, depression, etc., may not be picked up.
Zinc is an essential trace element in the body required for growth, fertility, immune function, taste, smell, and wound healing. It plays a vital role in immunity. It helps cell division and protein synthesis and is essential for infants, children, adolescents and pregnant women.
Animal foods are the most abundant sources of zinc. Milk and cheese contain high amounts of bioavailable zinc, and one egg can provide 5 percent of the daily requirements. Onion and garlic, incidentally relegated to the realm of the tamarisk, increase the bioaccessibility of iron and zinc from food.
Iron deficiency seriously affects children’s cognitive, psychomotor, physical and mental development. Giving them iron after deficiency has set in cannot reverse functional defects affecting learning and behaviour. Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) during pregnancy leads to increased maternal haemorrhage and premature birth.
Heme iron present in flesh foods has around 25 percent absorption from meat-containing meals. Non-heme iron, present in plant foods, has 2 – 10 percent absorption depending on inhibitors and enhancers in the diet. Phytates, polyphenols, calcium and phosphates found in bran, unpolished rice, soya, nuts, tea, coffee, red wines, and milk can inhibit iron absorption.
In the meantime, a study by Dasgupta et al. (2023) has shown that cattle slaughter bans cause a drop in haemoglobin of 1-2 gm in women who consume beef and increase severe anaemia!
The Karnataka government, which is yet to repeal as promised in its election manifesto, the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, or even seriously provide eggs in the mid-day meal scheme, now apparently sees this new initiative of adding 10 gm of an ultra-processed cereal/millet laden powder as a magical way to ensure nutrition for government school-going children, with a ‘focus on addressing nutritional inadequacies and preventing anaemia’
The people of Karnataka, who pride themselves on a syncretic culture and rational thought, including a history of social justice movements, must move beyond this caste-corporate nexus and demand better nutrition for children as a right (not charity).
(The writer is a public health doctor and researcher working on the right to health and nutrition. Views are personal.)
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