FSSAI Organises 2nd Eat Right Mela Highlighting Healthy Diets For A Better Life
Keeping the vision of Eat Right India Movement, the the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is organising second edition of the ‘National Eat Right Mela’ here in the national Capital.
While this year’s theme is- ‘Healthier Diets’, a day long national eat right mela is being organised from from 25th to 29th December at Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in the city.
The event is being organised in collaboration with National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) which will also present various delicacies of street food.
Explaining about the key distinguished features of this year’s mela, Pawan Agarwal, CEO of FSSAI said: “This year, we are focusing on the theme of ‘Healthier Diets’ where the idea is to focus various initiatives of FSSAI around healthy eating through gamification (in an interactive manner through games and quizzes) so that citizens can relate more personally with healthier diets”.
The ‘Eat Healthy’ pavilion will elaborate on the concepts of reducing consumption of High Fat, Salt and Sugar; eliminating trans-fats; increasing the consumption of fortified staples and choosing local and seasonal produce.
Other interesting pavilion to be showcased during the mela is ‘Food Safety’ pavilion, primarily focusing on FSAN (Food Safety and Applied Nutrition). This will focus on demonstration of rapid food testing kits/ devices with participation from various government institutions/laboratories categorized into 4 themes i.e., milk and milk products, salt and oils, meat and fish products and cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables and beverages namely.
Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Health Minister will inaugurate the national eat right mela on Thursday wherein he will address representatives from states during a workshop being organized to engage them with the ‘Eat Right India’ movement in order to scale it up at the state level.
The health minister will launch ‘The PURPLE Book’ a handbook on diets for diseases. The book provides general guidelines for hospitals to on suitable diets for common medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer, gut disorders and so on in a simple format and has been developed and vetted by experts in the field of food and nutrition.
He will also launch “Network for Scientific Co-operation for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition” (NetSCoFAN), a network of research and academic institutions working in the area of food and nutrition.
Inoshi Sharma, Director Social and Behaviour Change Division (SBCD), FSSAI mentioned that the Eat Right Mela is an effort to mainstream the key messages of the ‘Eat Right India Movement’’ – safe, healthy and sustainable diets in the lives of common people by leveraging the established and popular National Street Food Festival.
