India is emerging as one of the booming sporting nations across the world and its athletes are ready to lock horns with any competitors. Earlier, there were only handful of games such as Hockey and Cricket which where dominating this nation but now, the spectrum has grown immensely. But, there is still an area where country needs to tighten-up its screws if it wants to keep churning high quality athletes. Nutrition in sports is one chapter which is not yet touched by the authorities in India. Comparatively, other foreign nations are much ahead of India when it comes to nutrition in sports in fact, they have appointed experts to keep a close eye on the diet of their athletes and children. But now, India has also realised the importance of nutrition in sports and it is shifting gears to ramp up its sports industry in this segment. In an exclusive interview with NuFFoods Spectrum’s Nitin Konde, Prof. Dilip Kumar Dureha, Vice-Chancellor, Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education (LNIPE), Gwalior shares his views and future plans on nutrition in sports.
Where do you see India’s stand on nutrition in sports?
In India, there is still lot have to be done in this field specifically, spreading awareness about the importance of nutrition among children and athletes. This country has immense talent and has the potential of providing high quality athletes, which we are continuously doing from past few decades, who can win prestigious honors for this nation. Nutrition in sports plays a very vital role if we want our players to perform well in a long run.
Sports Authority of India (SAI) has appointed LNIPE a nodal body for conducting a survey among kids for their physical fitness. How you are planning to map this activity across India?
With this activity, we will be collecting data of almost 30,000 students of 8-14 years old across India. This data will be submitted to the Government of India. Later on, we will be analyzing the collected data to break it further down and then we will be providing grade (from 1-5) to each school. Once the grading is done then we will be taking this competition to a next level by organizing a mega event across the country. By grading various schools, our aim is to create a healthy competition among these institutions where defenders will try to retain their position at the top while opponents will work hard to grab their crown.
Till now how many students’ data you have collected and what are your plans to spread awareness about importance nutrition among children?
Currently, we have collected data of 24000 students and we are looking to achieve our target within few weeks. Once the data is analyzed, we will be starting our work from the ground level. First, we will spread awareness among the teachers because they are the right person to pass on the knowledge to their apprentices. Apart from that, we will be organizing several guest lectures for students and also an online series to further enhance our reach.
Recently, there were news pieces on young kids and athletes collapsing in the gym during their workout session, what do you have to say on that?
First, we need to study the entire history of such kids since there are multiple factors that can lead to such catastrophic incidents. There could be chances of person not consuming proper diet or not following a strict routine or even overdoing workouts so proper analysis is required before zeroing down on the issue. I feel that most of these young health freaks are moved by the glamour world and try mimic the same chiseled body as their screen icons have but in the process, they don’t realize that what they are watching on screen has not been achieved over night. To achieve that kind of physique, every person puts in lot of hard work, follows proper diet chart and exercises under the strict supervision of an expert. Youngsters overlook all these parameters and start enrolling themselves for gyms without taking proper knowledge about it.