Since its independence, India has made significant progress on human development to become a prominent global voice - a global force to reckon

BUT the benefits of a growing economy are not shared equally

India is still home to one-third of the world’s poor

India has made rapid strides in improving rates of under- and malnutrition. Between 2006 and 2016, stunting in children below five years declined from 48% to 38%. Yet, India continues to have one of the world’s highest child under-nutrition rates, impacting the child’s health and development, performance in school and productivity in adult life.

The Challenge: With nearly 195 million undernourished people, India shares a quarter of the global hunger burden. Nearly 47 million or 4 out of 10 children in India are not meeting their full human potential because of chronic under-nutrition or stunting. Stunting has consequences such as diminished learning capacity, poor school performance, reduced earnings and increased risks of chronic diseases. The impacts are multi-generational as malnourished girls and women often give birth to low birth-weight infants. There has also been an increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents in India, which has life-long consequences of non-communicable diseases in adulthood.

The government has large food security and anti-poverty programmes but there are critical gaps in terms of inclusion and exclusion errors. Women and girls are particularly disadvantaged. Despite the achievement of national food self-sufficiency, new challenges have emerged: Slowing agriculture growth, climate change, land degradation and shrinking bio-diversity. Large tracts of farmlands in India have become barren due to imbalanced fertilizer use and excessive use of a single fertilizer, urea.

Gurugram, home to almost 50% of Fortune 500 companies, located in the National Capital Region of India, enjoying the proximity to Delhi (capital of India), is also home to millions of people living in various slum pockets comprising migrant and daily-wage workers deprived of clean water, nutritious food, health and hygiene.

With illiteracy and no job security, these workers often do not recognize the symptoms of malnutrition in their children. Even in the most extreme cases, for fear of losing out on a day’s pay, parents often do not pay attention to children, leaving them to face the risk of the worst kind of malnutrition. Thousands of children here suffer from dengue, diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera and typhoid, owning to dirty water and unhygienic living conditions.

It’s not just about simple lack of availability of food - it is a combination of factors such as insufficient protein, energy and micronutrients in the daily diet and frequent infections, poor care and feeding practices, inadequate health services and poor water and sanitation.

Lack of equal access to nutritious food, stunts their growth - depriving them of essential vitamins and minerals making them more susceptible to disease.

If left untreated, there will soon emerge a whole generation with the physical and mental symptoms of malnutrition: a huge risk to India’s economic growth and development.

To fight this, on August 01, 2015, Food4Smile® was initiated to launch and organize feeding programs which eventually has grown to One Meal Per Day Feeding Programme focused on satisfying the hunger pangs of underprivileged once a day by providing them good nutritious food (ALL-in-Bowl Power Meal) securing a one-time meal for 365 days.

ALL-in-Bowl is an internationally accepted Power Meal, suggested by nutritionists. We ensure it is high on food nutrition, while it is mildly flavoured with natural spices to appeal to the palate. Ingredients: Steam Rice, Chana Dal / Masoor Dal / Moong Dal / Toor Dal, Chole / Rajma / Kala Chana, Soybean Chunks / Seasonal Vegetables with Ghee.

To feed an underprivileged on ONE single day it costs us around ₹ 14.67 INR (for our standardized ‘ALL-in-Bowl’ meal) [updated as on April 16, 2020].