Sanedo tunes help fight malnourishment in kids

VADODARA: Sanedo can do much more than just set-off a dance hysteria. This folk song with witty couplets, which is a rage during Navratri, can also help fight malnourishment!
Researchers at MSU have successfully used the raging popularity of sanedo to help 256 poorly nourished children of government schools regain health. All they did was tweaking the couplets and replacing their phrases with those showing importance of healthy food and habits like washing hands before meals and cutting nails.
The children, all from class IV to class XII, were made to dance on the new sanedo and another popular Gujarat garba "Mumbai thi gaadi aavi re.." whose lyrics were also customized.
"After two months, there was 80% increase in number of students washing their hands before meals. The learning through garba was so effective that there was notable decrease in thinness and prevalence of underweight reduced by nearly 7.8%," said Shweta Patel, one of the researchers.
As they embraced good habits, the nutrition levels in all children showed an encouraging increase. The study also showed that average haemoglobin levels also went up in all children.
The research was conducted by Uma Iyer, Swati Dhruv, Shweta Patel and Richa Mehta of the Department of Food and Nutrition at M S University's Faculty of Family and Community Sciences.
"Reinforcing healthy habits through popular songs is easier because it has a greater recall value," said Dhruv.
Prabha Mali, a municipal school teacher, said, "Such experiments hold the attention of children for much longer. The improvement in the nutrition levels are impressive and be replicated in every school."
Patel is now studying the long-term effect of nutritional health education on children. "The initiative will be a success only if songs are etched in the memory of the children. Primary data shows that they have not forgotten the message," she said.