-The Telegraph New Delhi: A medical panel has produced India's first-ever rule book to tackle widespread vitamin D deficiency that prescribes regular, possibly lifelong, doses to even healthy adults but warns that doctors may be over-testing and over-prescribing the drug. An expert group set by the Endocrine Society of India, an association of specialists, has prescribed vitamin D to healthy adults, adolescents, infants and all pregnant women after 12 weeks of gestation...

-The Hindu Forty years after being established with a mandate to generate data on the nutritional status of socially vulnerable groups, the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) has been shut down by the Union Health Ministry. The bureau, under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), had been critical in informing the government’s poverty alleviation interventions with periodic assessments of Nutrient Deficiency among tribal communities, pregnant women, adolescents and “at-risk” elderly population...

-The Hindu Business Line A valuable account of how holistic, small-farmer based agriculture can show the way MS Swaminathan is well known as the key architect of India’s Green Revolution in the mid-1960s and an all-time crusader against hunger and food insecurity. His latest book, entitled Combating Hunger and Achieving Food Security, broadly shows the road map for a hunger-free and food-secure India. The book has 30 chapters, each suggesting some sweet...

-Tehelka The country has egg on its face but not in its diet, as the Global Hunger Index reveals acute malnutrition Swachh Bharat Mission, if implemented in a holistic fashion, holds the key to curbing not only the problem of diarrhoeal deaths for which India holds the world record, but also malnutrition. However, the World Toilet Summit, which was held in the national capital this year as part of the Mission, was...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The average protein intake of a person through normal diet has dipped 6-10% in the past two decades with almost 80% of rural population and 70% of urban people not getting the government-designated 2,400kcal per day worth of nutrition, latest data shows. Comparative estimates drawn by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) reveal that in urban areas the gap in nutrition intake...