Love munching on chips and burgers to home-cooked dal-rice? Prefer those colas to home-made nimbu pani? If yes, here’s some food for thought. According to a study, 60 per cent of Mumbai’s population suffers from deficiency of essential micro-nutrients.
Micro nutrients, which include iron, zinc, manganese, calcium, are necessary for good health. The deficiency is caused by unhealthy lifestyles and poor eating habits. Though these are needed in very small quantities, medical experts call them ‘magic ingredients’. And that’s because their absence can cause severe health problems.
The data for the study was collected by 198 nutritionists and dieticians from over 1,200 patients.
“People who live in the city are gradually reducing their intake of traditionally cooked food,” said chief dietician and nutritionist Ushakiran Sisodia of Nanavati Hospital, one of the experts who conducted the study. “Most people today eat a lot of fast food and packaged food, which are not wholesome, and contain almost no required nutrients.”
The experts were given a questionnaire about the nutritional deficiencies they noticed in their patients. It included questions about their patients’ conditions, dietary habits, work, family, etc. “Seventy-six per cent of the nutritionists agreed that the micro-nutrient deficiency has become a part of affluent urban society,” said Sisodia, adding that the condition used to be common only among the rural population – due to poverty. She said the rural population normally survives on roti made of rice (bhakri) and chutney made of red and green chillies, both of which have almost no nutrient content.