Consensus of Medical Nutrition Therapy in Pediatric clinical practice (2 to 18 years old) of South Asian Perspective

Author(s):

Neelam Mohan, Anuradha Khadilkar, Vaman Khadilkar, Surender Kumar Yachha, Harendra De Silva, Prashanth Bachina, Dhanasekhar Kesavelu, Parag S Dekate, Rajendra P Shetty, Kamaldeep Arora, Prashant Patil, Anil Raj Ojha, Md Istiaque Hossain, Sangita Shakya, Pushpa Kumara KPC, Nawshad Uddin ASM, Syeda Afria Anwar, Banik SK, Shrish Bhatnagar, Lalit Verma, Saurabh Uppal

South Asia, one of the economically fastest growing regions in the world, faces the dual paradox of malnutrition in children and adolescents. More than half of all stunted and more than two-thirds of all wasted children under age of five in the world live in Asia. Of the 49.5 million under five wasted children in Asia, 16.6 were severely wasted in 2018. Paradoxically, Asia also had almost half of all the under-five overweight children in the world. While this region is still battling with under-nutrition, has seen a rise in non-communicable diseases over nutrition related conditions such as obesity, metabolic disorders, increased cardiovascular risk etc. in the pediatric and adolescent population. In a region that is growing economically, these numbers are alarming and point towards a need to take nutrition seriously. Food is available, but is either being underused by economically poor or overused by those economically better off. Most often the care givers are ignorant of giving the balanced diet to children which results in malnutrition. Malnutrition can be easily corrected. There are many cheap locally available food resources that can be built into a child’s diet to correct under-nutrition. Similarly, the right nutrition practices in the rich can curb over nutrition. Spreading this awareness is a monumental task and needs joint efforts of pediatricians, clinicians, parents, dieticians, psychologists and policy makers of the countries of this region. The experts reviewed the various recommendations and guidelines from various published articles and nutritional committees. These practice expert opinion recommendations from the experts from South Asia is an endeavor to move from a therapeutic to a preventive approach of tackling malnutrition. The experts hope that by following these practical recommendations malnutrition in South Asia will be tackled in a significant way.