DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand’s local food may not have made a special place in the list of niche cuisines of India but, it has certainly crafted an identity for itself among highly nutritive food series. URJA (Upyog Rojana Jaruri Hai – Abhi Se), a multi-nutrient food, which is being served to malnourished children of Uttarakhand has delivered convincing results for the department.

URJA is a combination of Uttarakhandi cereals, pulses and millets, rich in protein, calcium and iron. The super-nutritive diet has gained praises from all corners, especially minister of women and child development, Maneka Gandhi, who referred URJA to states with higher malnutrition rate.

“URJA has got special mention by the union minister in different national conferences and, we are glad that other states are looking up to Uttarakhand for building up their children’s health. Uttarakhand has succeeded in uplifting the nutrition levels of under-nourshied children through URJA in the past few months and we are sure that children of our state will be among one of the nicely nourished states of India.” said Vimmi Sachdeva, director, Uttarakhand department of women empowerment and child development.

Madhya Pradesh (25.8% malnutrition prevalence), Rajasthan (23%), and Haryana (21.2) had recently sent its officials to Uttarakhand for lessons on URJA. The project involves farmers for procuring best quality local products, women for cooking raw food items and health workers for distributing the item on a daily basis to under-nourished children at various anganwadis and schools.

A recently released report by WCD has put Uttarakhand at 17th position with 19.5% malnutrition. Haridwar district has the highest malnutrition rate (37%) and, hence, it has been included in 112 high priority districts of India to curb malnutrition.

Sujata Singh, deputy director of WECD, said, “Uttarakhand had around 32,500 malnourished children of which 2,870 were severely malnourished in March 2016 and, after one year the number of malnourished children came down to 25,149 of which 1,686 were severe cases.”