Status of Urban Slum Households’ Food Consumption Pattern and Suggestions to Improve their Food Consumption Pattern in the National Capital Region Muralikrishnan L., Barua Sukanya, Sangeetha V., Lenin V., Singh Premlata Division of Agricultural Extension, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi-110012 *Corresponding author email id: rakshitshantanu90@gmail.com
Abstract Worldwide, the population of slum dwellers in developing countries increased from 689 million in 1990 to 880 million in 2014. In India’s 2011 census revealed that the slum population stands 65 million people. Around 5.41 per cent of Indian population lives in slums. These people don't access enough food, health and sanitation and infrastructural facilities. Further, in food and nutritional parameters, the slum and homeless residents have been facing huge food and nutritional insecurity issues due to their affordability, poor awareness about nutritionally rich low cost food items, lack of consumption of micronutrient rich food groups, etc. It leads high incidences of micronutrient deficiencies. Under this background, a study was conducted in the Delhi union territory, with the sample size of 120 respondents of slum households. This study assessed the slum households’ awareness, knowledge level about the nutritionally rich food groups’ consumption pattern, nutritional status of the households. More than 50 per cent of the slum households have consumed poor food consumption practices. The household sanitation and healthy food consumption practices also were very poor. Hence, the study suggested that, the promotion of awareness and knowledge creations related to nutritional food consumption patterns through low cost nutritionally rich food crops like drumsticks, guava, banana, millets and greens, tomato based consumption to promote balanced nitrous food habits in the urban poor’s sustainable balanced diet with greater affordability and accessibility to improve the nutrient rich food consumption behaviour to the urban poor and easily address the Nutritional security of urban poor. Improvement of household sanitation and healthy food consumption practices also important to improve their nutritional security. Finally, food-specific policies are needed to improve the food systems to benefit the poor to solve the urban poor food and nutrition insecurity issues. Top Keywords Food consumption, Micronutrient deficiencies, Nutritional insecurity, Urban slum households. Top |