New Delhi Police has made nutrition a focal point in its agenda by making sure its personnel eat right to stay away from lifestyle disease. By ensuring only proper healthy diet is available in its campuses, it has successfully managed to get four of its police stations tagged as ‘Eat Right Campus’.
To provide healthy and nutritious food, the Delhi government is providing certificates of ‘Eat Right Campus’ tags to business stakeholders under its flagship programme, ‘Sehatmand Delhi’. Till now, many hospitals, Tihar Jail, government schools have been recognised with the Eat Right Campus tag. And, recently, four police stations of New Delhi district have also been certified as ‘Eat Right Campus’ by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
Indian Masterminds spoke to Commissioner, Food Safety, Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi, Ms. Neha Bansal, IAS and DCP New Delhi, Deepak Yadav, IPS, to get details about the Eat Right programme.
EAT RIGHT INDIA
Eat Right India is a flagship mission of Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) under Ministry of health and family welfare (MoH&FW), Government of India. It aims at ensuring that the citizens of country get safe and nutritious food to reduce the burden of lifestyle related diseases.
SEHATMAND DELHI
The Government of Delhi is working in mission mode under its flagship program “Sehatmand Delhi” to identify campuses that can be recognised under the Eat Right Campus initiative of FSSAI.
Since foodborne illnesses and various diet-related diseases cut across all age groups and all sections of society, it adopts a ‘whole of society’ approach, bringing all stakeholders together on a common platform.
Ms. Neha Bansal, Commissioner, Food Safety, government of NCT of Delhi, said: “We have covered 45 Eat Right Campuses so far, including 4 police stations, 10 temple premises under BHOG initiative, 4 clean and fresh fruits and vegetable markets and 2 clean street food hubs.”
EAT RIGHT CAMPUS
New Delhi Police took up the Eat Right initiative to focus on the health, nutrition and diet of its personnel across canteen, kitchen and mess.
A largescale training and infrastructural change drive was carried out and four police stations of New Delhi were able to meet the benchmark for certification, with 5 stars. The names of the stations are – Police Station BK Road, Police Station Connaught Place, Police Station Tilak Marg and Police Station Mandir Marg.
“This is the first such initiative taken in health and nutrition for police personnel in the country, and these four police stations are the first to achieve such certification,” said DCP Deepak Yadav.
THREE PRINCIPLES
He further told Indian Masterminds that the programme, Sehatmand Delhi, works on three principles:
1. Eat Safe: To ensure the food which is served to the officers, jawans, visitors and staff is safe to consume in compliance to FSS, Act 2006.
2. Eat Healthy: Promoting diet diversity and balanced diets, eliminating toxic trans fats or the ‘bad fat’ found in industrial food products that has significant negative health effects; reducing consumption of salt, sugar and saturated fats that are another form of ‘bad fat’ which may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. And promoting largescale fortification or food enrichment with additional nutrients.
3. Eat Sustainable: Promote local and seasonal food production, prevent food loss and food waste by avoiding transportation of food through long distances, and growing local, conserving water, reducing the use of chemicals in food production and use of safe and sustainable packaging.
“The programme also percolates the message of Eat Right to larger population through our officers, their families, and the visitors coming to police stations,” DCP Yadav said.
AUDITS
The programme also includes a preliminary audit of the campus, identifying the gaps, rectifying the gaps through capacity building and training and sensitization, creation of SOPs, followed by final audit by third party audit agencies.
The successful completion of these activities led to the recognition of the four New Delhi Police Stations’ campuses as ‘Eat Right Campus’ and a certificate to this effect has been issued by FSSAI.
Commissioner Food Safety, Delhi, Ms. Bansal said, “We are looking forward to certification of all police stations of Delhi. This would ensure proper food for all police forces. Our Chief Secretary, Vijay Dev sir, too, has encouraged us to cover all police stations. We will try to cover them all as soon as possible.”
