Low Cost Nutritious Supplements

A pamphlet entitled "Low Cost Nutritious Supplements for Infants and Preschool Children" was brought out in 1974 by the National Institute of Nutrition. In the short space of less than two years, it has been reprinted several times. In this pamphlet, a number of recipes suitable to be used as supplements to infants and preschool children were described.

In recent years, the Government of India has launched several large scale nutrition programmes, one of the aims of which is to provide nutritious supplements to preschool children, as well as to pregnant and nursing women. Many of the agencies concerned with the implementation of these programmes have been interested in obtaining suitable formulations based on locally available food resources for use in their programmes. To meet this need, the publication has been revised and a number of recipes suitable for use in Special Nutrition Programmes are provided in this brochure.

Under the Special Nutrition Programme, pregnant and nursing women also received supplements. The prevalent diets of these groups of population are on the average deficient to the extent of about 600 calories and 20g of protein compared to the balanced diet recommended by nutrition experts for these groups. By providing a supplement in twice, the quantities recommended for children in this brochure, this gap can be bridged. This would mean that there is no need to prepare two types of food- one for children and one for adults, but that just one type can be used to meet the needs of both the vulnerable segments of the population.

It is hoped that this booklet will find wide acceptance by persons who are in charge of implementing the special nutrition programme and other feeding programmes all over the country.

**Contents and Sample Pages**