IN INDIA, 45,000 HEALTHY ADULT WOMEN DIE GIVING BIRTH EACH YEAR – THAT’S FIVE DEATHS EVERY HOUR OF THE DAY AND NIGHT.
Riya Pal, 14, looks forward to the lunch break at school because of the fruity yoghurts her mum packs for her every day. “It’s fuss free and she loves the taste and there is a variety of flavours, which is encouraging as she used to find plain curd boring,” says her mother Veera, 42, a south Delhi-based housewife. From being a neglected in a corner of supermarket shelves a few years ago, nutrient-dense yoghurt has fast evolved into being a food option for people looking for a healthy power snack on the go.
Apart from flavours, yoghurt comes in many varieties, with millions going into research to make it tastier and healthier.
“We use a combination of ferments to improve on taste and texture. In our collection there should be 4,500 different strains,” says Vanessa Coupez, public health nutrition manager, Danone Nutricia Research, Europe-based global company, which specializes in dairy and nutrition.
Most new research emphasised on maintaining healthy intestinal flora to improve overall health because it increases nutrient absorption to boost immunity and health.
Yoghurt is a natural source of protein, calcium and potassium, with a single serving of yoghurt giving you significant amounts of essential vitamins and minerals such as phosphorous, potassium, vitamins B12 and B5, riboflavin, zinc and iodine. “Yoghurt is not a solution to all your dietary needs but is a driver to propose healthier habits to be as close as possible to the need to meet essential nutrients,” says Coupez.
For people who have difficulties in digesting fresh milk products because they are lactose mal digesters, yoghurt is the best option. “Yoghurt is the safest bet among all milk products. It is rich in lactobacillus, the probiotic bacteria that work wonders for the gut, it aids digestion and lowers symptoms of diarrhoea and constipation,” says nutritionist Richa Anand, a consultant at Mumbai’s Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital. “I recommend it for kids on a regular basis.”
Anand recommends having yoghurt with every meal, particularly for pregnant women, people who exercise heavily and those recovering from diseases.
Danone’s lab in Palaiseau, France, has an intestinal-digestion simulator to test the survival of bacteria inside the digestive system. “To check the viability of the bacteria in different stages of digestion, the simulator mimics effects of saliva in the mouth and stomach and intestinal acids, to study influencing factors for the survival of bacteria in the digestive system,” says Jean-Michel Faurie, expert probiotics, starters and fermentation, Danone.
“It takes 1.5 to 5 years from tweaking a technology to make changes to a product or create a completely new technology and product altogether,” he says.
Yoghurt is also favoured by people looking to lose weight because it’s low-fat and if unsweetened, low-calorie. “There is usually no downside to making yoghurt a staple part of your diet, but people who are obese, diabetic or have high cholesterol must go for have yoghurt made from skimmed milk,” says Anand.
Indrayani Pawar, a dietician at Hinduja Healthcare Surgical, Mumbai, says that there are several myths about eating yoghurt that need to be busted. A common one is that it acts as in irritant for people with respiratory and lung problems. “People believe the sourness in yoghurt induces cough and should be avoided by people with respiratory problems, but they are wrong. They should just have it at room temperature,” says Pawar.
Yoghurt being a great source of Class-I proteins that is found from animals, and is great for pre-workout and post-workout consumption as it is easy to digest. “Preworkout, have a small bowl of yoghurt with muesli and post workout, it can be incorporated into a smoothie with nuts, which gives you a great combination of proteins and complex carbohydrates,” says Pawar.
There is a word of caution for people with compromised immunity. “These are live bacteria that grow inside the gut, but if you are immune-compromised, then your body may not be able to even deal with good bacteria,” says Dr Sudeep
Khanna, senior consultant, gastroenterology department, Indraprastha
Apollo Hospital, Delhi. Some, like Bandra-resident Sunaina Bhagwat, 46, still prefers to set yoghurt at home. “I feel it’s way healthier than packaged products and I add it to regular dishes like a chicken curry or coconut chutney because it is healthy, tasty and gives the right consistency,” she says. “My son loves it and I make it a point to ensure he has it daily, even when he has a cough and cold, because it does improve immunity.”
A10-year-old child serially raped by her uncle was denied permission to terminate her 26 weeks pregnancy by a Chandigarh Court last week because of fears that an abortion so late in the pregnancy could kill her.
Continuing the pregnancy is a bigger threat to the pregnant child’s life and sanity. Medically, the chances of the little girl dying carrying her rapist’s foetus to term are far higher than getting an abortion at 26 weeks.
Girls may start menstruating and ovulating as early as age 9 and may even become pregnant, but this does not mean they can safely carry a pregnancy through. Until the late teens, a women’s pelvis – muscles and bone in the hip region that support for the growing uterus and baby – does not fully widen to create a birth canal for the child to emerge during delivery. This makes it difficult for young girls to push the baby through, which often leads to prolonged labour, sometimes lasting days. Babies often don’t survive the trauma of birth, and very often, neither do young mothers. In India, 45,000 healthy adult women die giving birth each year – that’s five deaths every hour of the day and night. The risk of pregnant girls under the age of 15 dying is two and a half times greater than that for women above age 20. If the pregnant child is a 10-year-old child, the risk is compounded.
A young child carrying a pregnancy through has exponentially higher chances of delivering a severely premature and underweight baby, developing high blood pressure (pre-eclampsia and eclampsia that lead to seizure, coma), severe bleeding after childbirth, infections and other complications related to labour and childbirth. Even in healthy adult women, these causes account for 70% of childbirth-related deaths in India.
Young girls who survive childbirth often develop fistulas (holes between the vaginal wall and the rectum or bladder) from injury created by the baby’s head pushing through a tiny birth canal. As it pushed down, the mother’s soft tissue gets crushed between the baby’s skull and her pelvic bones, leading to holes in the walls through which faeces and urine leak incessantly to cause frequent infection. Pregnancy is more physically taxing for an underdeveloped girl than an adult woman because pregnant women also supply nutrition and oxygen to the foetus in the womb, which puts an extra strain on her heart that has to pump more blood. In undernourished 10-year-old, the foetus fights for iron, calcium and other vital nutrients from its child-mother, which leads to severe deficits in nutrition essential for physical and mental development. The chances of the foetus surviving the full term are poor, both in the womb and after birth. Babies born to teens younger than 15 are more than twice as likely to be underweight at birth and are three times more likely to die in the first 28 days of life than babies born to older mothers. In the Chandigarh case, since the girl or her parents did not know about the pregnancy at a very late stage, the pregnant child did not get the required prenatal care. India’s Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act puts the legal ceiling for getting an abortion at 20 weeks, but there are legal precedents of Courts ruling in favour of aborting advanced pregnancies in raped minors.
In 2015, India’s Supreme Court ruled a 14-year-old raped girl could end her 25-week pregnancy. In May 2017, the Court allowed Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) to decide whether a 10-year-old from Haryana raped by her stepfather could abort her 18-22 weeks foetus. PGIMS terminated the pregnancy.
There have also been judgments denying abortion to raped girls in late stages of pregnancy. In June this year, Bombay High Court refused to allow a 17-year-old raped girl to abort at 26 weeks.
Since India’s MTP Act became law in 1971, technological advances in medicine have made abortions safe at very late stages of the pregnancy, which prompted the Union Health ministry to propose raising the legal limit for abortion from 20 weeks to 24 weeks for “vulnerable” women such as rape and incest survivors setting no upper limit in cases of “substantial foetal abnormalities”.
With Prime Minister’s Office sending the MTP (Amendment) Bill back to the health ministry for changes, the uncertainty about the way ahead will continue. Rape survivors need closure. Forcing them to carry their abuser’s foetus when they can safely abort is cruel.
‘MY SON LOVES IT AND I MAKE IT A POINT TO ENSURE HE HAS IT DAILY, EVEN WHEN HE HAS A COUGH AND COLD, BECAUSE IT DOES IMPROVE IMMUNITY.’