Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare kicked off Eat Right India Movement today with its new logo and tagline ‘Sahi Bhojan, Behtar Jeevan’. The Eat Right India movement is a brainchild of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to ensure the accessibility and affordability of the nutrient rich food to make India fit.

While addressing the media on the launch of Eat Right India Movement, Dr Harsh Vardhan said, “Eat Right India movement is a crucial trigger for the much needed social and behavioural change. This campaign along with the ‘Fit India Movement’ launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will help us to fight lifestyle diseases like hypertension, obesity and diabetes effectively.”               

There is an expansion of modern processed food chains through supermarkets or megastores. These supermarkets have affected how food travels from farm to fork. Moreover, there is a greater burden of malnutrition in rural india and obesity in urban population which is posing a major challenge to the government in ensuring the balanced accessibility and affordability of nutritional food.

“The month of September is being celebrated all across the country as “Poshan Maah” (Nutrition Month) to sensitize the public towards healthy eating. This movement is aligned with the Government’s flagship public health programmes such as POSHAN Abhiyaan, Ayushman Bharat Yojana and Swachh Bharat Mission to lead us to the New India, which our Prime Minister wishes to deliver to all citizens by 2022,” said Dr Harsh Vardhan.

Pawan Agarwal, CEO of FSSAI said that recently over 1.7 lakh food safety supervisors have been trained and certified to educate street food hubs and food business operators as an large-scale initiative program to ensure food safety.

Dr Poonam Khetrapal, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region said, “ Eat Right India movement is a great step taken by Indian Government which will help in reducing the huge burden of disease on India. The South-east Asian countries have already started embedding the packaged food items with color marks as low to high risk level of processed and unhealthy food. The message of ‘Eat Right’ should be promoted everywhere.”

To make Eat Right India Movement a Jan Andolan, FSSAI also designed unique and creative mascot as Miss Sehat and Master Sehat to teach students a fun way of safe and healthy eating.

Master Sehat And Miss Sehat Mascot

A New Logo of +F on Fortified Food Items:

India has a very high burden of micronutrient deficiencies caused by Vitamin A, Iodine, Iron and Folic Acid leading to Night Blindness, Goitre, Anaemia and various birth defects.

The apex food regulator of the country has also designed and launched the logo for Food Fortification. The food fortification logo will be embedded on the fortified foods to make aware the people that extra nutrients have been added to such fortified food. Fortification is done to the food to increase the nutrition level which may or may not be lost while processing the food.