Nutrifest

NUTRIFEST - “A festival for nutritional awareness” is organized every year at the centre to create awareness on the importance of right and balanced diet in growing children. This year it was celebrated on Thursday the 9^th March between 11.00 am and 1.30 pm. This is the sixteenth year that we are organizing this festival. The event is specially designed to focus on the importance of nutritional intervention for special children. “Healthy Foods, Healthy Kids”.

Every year a theme is selected and a cookery competition on the theme for the mothers takes place. The theme this year was “Traditional, Healthy, Age appropriate Short Eats”. The ages of the children to whom we cater are birth to 2, 2–6, 7-15 years.

There was a cookery competition on the theme and marks were awarded as per the criteria listed below :

• Innovative and easily preparable recipe
• Presentation of the dish
• Charts depicting the nutritive value and role of traditional recipes in giving the children a balanced diet

Mothers will have to keep in mind these age groups and prepare a recipe for short eats, for a particular age group incorporating traditional and healthy ingredients. The dishes were displayed in the prayer hall and judged.

The Judges of this year were :

• Dr. Ruchi Mittal is a developmental paediatrician based in Chennai. She completed her MD Paediatrics from Sri Ramachandra Medical College in which she stood university second. She then went on to do a fellowship in developmental paediatrics. She is passionate about early intervention in high risk newborns and improving outcomes in children with developmental disabilities. She has been coming to MNC to observe implementation of Early Intervention and has plans to set up an EIC in future.


• Mrs. Gowri Ramakrishnan – A teacher all her life she retired as the Principal of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Virugambakkam. Her experience in the teaching line for 30 years has brought her numerous awards. On the 29^th Jan 2023 she received an award for excellent leadership in bringing up Chinmaya Vidyalaya to where it is today from His Excellency Mr. N Ravi our Governor, Best Principal – Vijaya Rathna Award, Best Principal Award from NIIT, Best Principal award from West Sahodaya Cluster, Gandhi Peace Award for promoting Gandhiyan values and many more.


• Miss Juhi N Fathima - With a Bachelors degree in clinical nutrition and a masters in Dietetics and applied nutrition from Manipal University she has just started her career. She is Junior Nutritionist with Purple Teal Inc, USA. Purple teal operates an automated, personalized mHealth messaging platform which engages subscribers to take better care of their health and wellness, by educating them and prompting them to take appropriate and timely health actions. She wants everyone to understand that “everything begins from the Plate”. Food, diet and exercise should become a habit for everyone says she. Welcome to you maam.

Earlier Mrs. Avanti Prabhakar : Our honorary nutrition consultant, who holds a doctorate in Nutrition and Dietetics with more than 15 years of experience in teaching undergraduate and graduate students and her department put up a demonstration of dishes on the 21^st of Feb 2023 to explain to them the nutritive value of the ingredients that they can use in traditional recipes. The mothers took guidance from her to participate in the cookery completion. On the day of the festival the parents with their children, teachers and other invitees gathered in the Prayer hall with a colourful array of dishes, vying with each other for taste and display. About 50 dishes came out on the table and the three judges were put to difficulty in selecting the dishes that were outstanding.

The day came to a close with the rolling shield being awarded to the best team and the judges’ comments on the display and improvements that can be brought in.