'Deliberate and malicious': India slams Harvard study on so-called 'zero-food children'

The Government of India on Tuesday (Mar 12) slammed a Harvard study which claimed that 6.7 million (67 lakh) children in India are "zero food". The Indian Union Ministry of Women and Child Development denouncing the report labelled it a "deliberate and malicious" attempt by "interested lobbies to sensationalise fake news".

The Harvard study

Published in February in the journal JAMA Network, the Harvard study claims that 19.3 per cent of children in India are "zero-food children".

The study evaluates 92 low- and middle-income countries. With 19.3 per cent of its population, the study ranks India at the third position behind Guinea (21.8 per cent of its children) and Mali (20.5 per cent of its children).

However, it claims that "India accounted for almost half of zero-food children in this study," and that in terms of quantity, the nation has the highest number at six million.

What are "zero-food children"?

The study describes the term "zero-food children" as "children who did not consume any animal milk, formula, or solid or semi-solid food during the last 24 hours."

What the Indian ministry said

Slamming the report, the Indian Union Ministry of Women and Child Development said: "The JAMA article does not acknowledge the importance of breast milk for infants who are more than six months old and has instead looked at only the feeding of such infants with animal milk/formula, solids or semi-solids, etc."

"It is surprising that the Article excludes breast milk from the definition of food for infants who are six to twenty-three months old. Out of the so-called 19.3 per cent Zero Food Children referred to by the study, 17.8 per cent had received breast milk and only 1.5 per cent children have been claimed as non-breast fed."

"Out of approximately 13.7 crore children in the age group of 6 months to 6 years in India, 8.9 crore are registered at Anganwadi Centres and 95 per cent of them are Aadhaar verified on the Poshan Tracker. As per data of the Poshan Tracker, only about 6.26 per cent are found to be wasted and only 1.9 per cent are severely malnourished," added the statement.

(With inputs from agencies)