Expression of Experience

India is leading when it comes to the number of blind children cases and over 20% of the world’s blind population is from India. The first week of April is celebrated as “ The Prevention of Blindness Week” every year. And, this year the theme is “Nutritional Blindness among Children and its Remedies”. Out of 10,000 children born in India, 7 of them suffer from eye related diseases because of nutritional deficiencies. According to the estimate of the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness (NSPB) in India , insufficient nutrition is the cause of 1.2 crore children turning blind across the world. Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) is the major cause behind nutritional blindness among children in India and the figure is 52,500 per year (According to a report “ Prevalence of Vitamin A Deficiency is a Greater Concern in Children in India ” published by Juniper Publisher on Feb 06, 2018). Every year, around half million new cases of childhood blindness comes up across t...

The spicy truth of the daily spices is not as palatable as we taste the spices! Turmeric, chili, Coriander, ginger, Cardamom, cumin powder, fennel seeds, rasam powder, saffron etc. are regularly used in foods by Indian households not only to add taste but also for their therapeutic values. But the purity of these high value ground powders are being risked by adulteration as the consumers cannot easily evaluate its quality based on sensory input alone. According to a Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry data, there has been a drastic increase in the food adulteration in the last three years across Maharashtra (As reported by The Free Press Journal on Mar 26, 2018). In February, the food safety officials seized poor quality of 600 kg of chili powder prepared with chili waste and sawdust in a raid conducted at a manufacturing in Delhi. They also seized 100 kg of salt and 100 kg of black gram. There were more than 200 such criminal cases against such frauds in India at th...