Neelajana Singh, Nutrition Consultant, Heinz Nutri Life Clinic & PSRI Hospital & President, Indian Dietetics Association, Delhi Chapter
Neelajana Singh is currently working as a Nutrition Consultant at Heinz Nutri Life Clinic and Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute (PSRI). She started her career at a government hospital, AIIMS, then moved out of Delhi, worked on a couple of research projects, taught at Delhi University, ran a web based health start-up for 2 years, then finally moved back to practicing at a hospital – completing a full circle.
Speaking about her role as a nutrition consultant, she said, “Once I did complete the circle, I decided it was time to pick and choose the kind of work that I wanted to do – which is why I am a freelancer now. Now I divide my time between writing, advisory, consultancy and working in the interest of the Association that takes Dieticians in its fold (IDA).”
Heinz Nutri Life Clinic is an initiative by Heinz Nutrition Foundation India (HNFI) to interact, consult and counsel people needing nutritional advices free of charge.
Speaking on this initiative Singh said, “Getting the right advice on diet can work wonders for people with health problems. Modern nutrition has many wonderful-even miraculous-diet based treatments. Unfortunately people get confused by too many unverified pseudo-scientific theories about diet and nutrition that are floating around.”
Neelajana also opined that there is a myth that nutrition industry is also a male dominated industry whereas, it is the other way round since most of the nutritionists are women. She has authored two books ‘Our Kid Eats Everything!’ (Hachette, 2015) has been a popular resource with parents and kids as she has tried to make it easy to read and understand the concepts of health and wellness. ‘Why Should I Eat Healthy?’ is a TERI publication (2017) for children to read themselves and imbibe healthy eating habits.
She has faced lot of challenges in her career but immense focus and open to learning are the two sculls that managed to steer her boat successfully.
“The challenge so far has been to try and change people’s behaviour (which is no easy task) so that they adopt healthier practices. I think with repeated efforts there is surely better awareness in society today. The keenness is evident from the desire that corporates and schools show during the many workshops that I have conducted for the benefit of the students and employees,” adds Singh.