Nutrir is an initiative against problems of malnutrition and obesity that effect nearly half of the Brazilian population. Research confirms that being informed is just as important as having access to food in the fight against malnutrition and obesity. On the other hand, people who were undernourished during their childhood are more likely to be obese when exposed to a high calorie diet. Since the inflation has been controlled ten years ago, the low income population in Brazil has permanently improved their income. They are now able to buy basic needs products and are eating more proteins and carbohydrates. This makes them more vulnerable to obesity when making the wrong decisions in their eating habits.
The philosophy behind the Nutrir programme does not see lack of food as the sole source of malnutrition. This is only one aspect of the problem. Malnutrition is also a result of lack of affection between mother and child, lack of information in the family and the incidence of diseases triggered in most cases by lack of hygiene.
To improve this situation, people have to undergo a reeducation process to change their ways of thinking and their feeding habits.
For all of these reasons, Nutrir was launched and developed as a food education programme to prevent malnutrition and obesity in children and adolescents who are between 5 and 14 years of age and of an unfavourable socioeconomic situation. Nutrition education will then directly reach their families and communities.
Right: The Nutrir gardens are a place for both learning and fun.
Through games and play, Nestlé conveys health and hygiene concepts, and information regarding the full use of foodstuff to this target group, so that they develop healthy habits and attain better nutrition from available resources.
The Nutrir Programme is supported by three pillars: volunteer work, alliances with universities, such as the Federal University of Paraiba in Northeast Brazil, UFRN (Rop Grande do Norte University) in Natal and Univale (Universidade do Vale do Itajai) in Santa Catarina, local government, such as the Programmea Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (National Feeding Programme in Public Schools), and other organisations such as the Nipo Brasileiro Hospital in Osasco.
In 2008 and as a result of this project, Nutrir reached 800 schools in 11 cities, where 250'000 children were trained on nutrition education. The volunteer corp is currently attending 23 organisations and has a group of 2'600 employees that dedicate 116'000 hours per year to nutrition education.
Activities involve working with local governments to provide nutrition education to children and adolescents of public schools in the Northeast region of Brazil. Furthermore, the Nutrir programme supports another goal - to establish food education as a subject within the Brazilian curriculum by providing Nestlé technicians to train nutritionists, teachers and cooks in public schools, and providing educational materials for the classroom. From 17th until 19th of August 2008, a seminar was organised in the scope of the Nutrir programme in order to discuss local governments' best practices.
In addition, Nutrir has established a partnership with the Federal University of Paraiba to train the teachers of public schools on nutritional education. All public schools of João Pessoa, the capital state, have already been trained with Nutrir material and methodology.
