Food Policy and Public Health Nutrition

The Department of  Food Policy & Public Health Nutrition, was established in October 2019 at CSC&RI, Madurai with the vision to assure food safety, health and hygiene for better nutrition and health of the community.  Food Science, Nutrition and Food Policy are inter-related disciplines which provide for academic study across many diverse disciplines. Food has also been taken as a marker of globalization and also acts as a bridge in maintenance of health. The global food market is dominated by the unorganized food processing sector that delivers high calorie, low cost foods, mostly compromised on safety aspects and comes with a price, that externalizes costs to the nation in terms of health consequences (diabetes, coronary heart disease and other food-related diseases) and to the environment leading to pollution and the imperative need for associated clean-up strategies. Thus there is need for advocating, framing and implementation of sustainable public health policy frame work to address ecological issues of food at all stages of the food chain, from ‘farm to fork’ approach.

• Understanding the application of Agriculture, Food, Nutrition and Health Policies to promote adoption of innovations in the respective field.
• Make agriculture more sustainable and thereby reduce poverty and hunger.
• Community based approaches regarding Food Security, Nutrition, Agriculture and Rural development.
• Research based policy solutions to bring about sustainable reduction in poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

• To achieve food and nutrition security for all and ensure access to quality food to lead an active and healthy life.

• To work in the areas of food policy and public health nutrition and to transfer the knowledge gained and skills to the stakeholders for promoting health and wellbeing.
• To emphasize on nutrition security and to create awareness among public on lifestyle disorders and implement preventive measures for better health outcomes.
• To eliminate hunger and malnutrition including food and nutrition security concerns.