India’s Prevalence of Zero-Food Children

•  A study published recently in the peer reviewed JAMA Network Open journal found the prevalence of zero-food children in India at 19.3%, drawing attention to extreme food deprivation among children.
• The study defined the zero-food children as those between 6-23 months who had not consumed any animal milk, solid or semisolid food in the last 24 hours.

Key Highlights 

• It was conducted across 92 low and middle income countries (LMIC).
• The data for India was sourced from the National Family Health Survey 2019-21.     - The study ranks India as having the third highest percentage (19.3%) of zero-food children, above Guinea (21.8%) and Mali (20.5%).
• India has by far the highest number of ‘zero-food’ children at 6.7 million, accounting for almost half of all ‘zero food children’ across 92 countries in the survey.
• It also talks about the importance of introducing solid or semisolid foods to a child’s diet - as breastfeeding alone is not sufficient to provide children with nutrition, which, in turn, might hinder their growth and development.