Best solution to problem of malnutrition  

Millets can save a million lives every year

In the 1960s, the average annual per capita consumption of sorghum and millets was 32.9 kg, roughly eight times the 4.2 kgs an urban Indian consumed in 2010. So-called ‘inferior’ sorghum (jawar) and millets pearl (bajra), finger (ragi), little (kutki), kodo (kodon), foxtail (kakum) and barnyard (sanwa) have lost plate share, mainly to ‘superior’ wheat, a dietary shift associated with growing incomes and urbanisation, said a 2014 National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) report.

Advantage Millets

• Barnyard millet has 531 percent the iron in wheat, 1,033 percent that in rice. Pearl millet has 314 percent the iron in wheat, 611 percent that in rice. Little millet has 265 percent the iron in wheat, 516 percent that in rice.
• Finger millet has 839 per cent the calcium content of wheat and 3,440 per cent that of rice. Pearl millet and wheat are comparable in calcium content, both of which have four times the calcium density of rice.
• Barnyard millet has 313 percent the mineral content of wheat, 783 per cent that of rice; foxtail millet has 220 per cent the mineral content of wheat, 550 per cent that of rice.

• Proso, foxtail, pearl and barnyard millets compare with wheat in protein content. Sorghum and all millets are richer sources of protein than rice.

In 2010, an urban Indian consumed 52 kg of wheat, almost twice the 27-kg annual consumption of the mid-1960s. As a result, since 1956, the area under millets has shrunk: 23 percent for pearl millet, 49 per cent for finger millet, 64 per cent for sorghum and 85 per cent for small (or minor) millets.

If this area dwindles further, India stands to lose a crop that is native to the sub-continent, according to a new study detailing the origins of food crops, offering a sustainable livelihood. India loses about one million children under the age of five from malnutrition-related causes every year. Anaemia among women is static at 48.1 percent in India, one of the world’s worst (170th out of 185).

Since millets and sorghum require less water than other crops-pearl and finger millet can make do with 28 per cent of paddy’s rainfall needs they are better adapted for current and future droughts. If this trend can be reversed, a diverse range of problems related to malnutrition, farming and water use could be addressed.

Nutritionally, millets are richer than wheat, rice More Indians should eat sorghum and millets, if the country’s continuing malnutrition challenge is to be addressed. Girls fed a diet composed of sorghum (60 percent) and rice (40 percent) recorded a high growth rate than those fed just rice, according to a 2015 study by Hyderabad’s Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) and the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN).

The challenge is getting Indians, especially urban Indians, to revert to millets when the government has been promoting the consumption of wheat and rice for decades, especially as subsidised food for the poor through the public distribution system (PDS). “Prior to the enactment of the National Food Security Bill in 2013, the government had included only wheat and rice in the PDS, which helped lower the consumption of coarse grains,” said Muniappan Karthikeyan, programme leader with the DHAN Foundation, an NGO.

In 2014, IndiaSpend reported how the National Food Security Mission had been extended to include coarse grains, such as millets, at Rs 1 per kg through the PDS. PDSs that use micronutrient-rich foods are more nutritious than ones that do not, IndiaSpend reported in July 2016. (In arrangement with http://www.indiaspend.com)

By Charu Bahri