Palaj, Gandhinagar: In one more pioneering feat, the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) becomes one of the first educational institutes in the country to receive Eat Right Campus Award from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). IIT Gandhinagar Director, Prof Sudhir K Jain will receive the award for the Institute on June 07, 2019 at a programme hosted by FSSAI in FDA Bhawan, New Delhi, to commemorate the first World Food Safety Day declared by the United Nations General Assembly.
IITGN had taken initiative in all of their mess, food joints and canteens within the campus. All these are Licensed/Registered by the Food and Drugs Control Administration (FDCA) Gujarat, trained by the Food Safety Awareness and Training Organization (FSATO) an empanelled training partner and audited by DNV GL Business Assurance India Pvt. Ltd. (DNVGL), an empanelled third party auditing agency. The audit is done through a checklist based on five parameters i.e. a) Compliance to food safety and hygiene b) Healthy diets c) Food waste management d) Promotion of local and seasonal foods on campus e) Promotion and awareness on food safety and healthy diets in and around campus. On the basis of final audit score, the institute is certified as ‘Eat Right Campus’ with five star rating.
Announcing the ‘Eat Right Campus’ award to IITGN, CEO, FSSAI Sh. Pawan Agarwal said, “Access to adequate amount of safe and nutritious food is the key to sustaining life, promoting good health and preventing foodborne diseases. Eat Right Campus initiative of FSSAI is a powerful tool to enable the administration/management to ensure safe and wholesome food for both the residents and visitors to their campus. I am glad to see this award going to IIT Gandhinagar and other such institutes across the country. This will help in encouraging other campuses to adopt and promote healthy food practices on campus for the wellbeing of their students and the community.”
Upon receiving this special award, Prof Sudhir K Jain, Director, IITGN, said, “The Institute has always followed the core policy of students-first. All of our efforts and initiatives focus on the wellbeing and betterment of our students, faculty and the community. The conscious efforts made by the institute to ensure healthy, nutritious and safe food for all is one of them. The ‘Eat Right Campus’ award by FSSAI is a welcome recognition to the dedicated efforts of our entire team of students, faculty, staff, vendors and vendors’ staff. We are grateful to all of them for their commitment to ensure healthy and hygienic food on our campus.”
Eat Right Campus Initiatives by IITGN:
IITGN ensures high standards for the quality of food served at its dining halls and the other eating joints. Appropriate measures are taken to maintain cleanliness and hygiene. All the food joints of the campus have valid FSSAI license. The institute focuses on the healthy food habits; the menu served in the mess is tailored every month by the student mess council for a balanced diet that provides the body with essential nutrition. Besides, all the food joints use fortified foods (+F) such as double fortified Salt, Rice, Wheat Flour, Oil and Milk, to further enhance the food nutrition.
IITGN promotes local and seasonal foods by inclusion of such vegetables and fruit items in the monthly menu. For unused excess food, IITGN has collaborated with Robinhood Army (a volunteer organization) to collect and distribute the leftover food for the needy. The Institute has also coordinated with Bio Diesel Association of India (BDAI) for collection of used cooking oil from the eating joints. The used waste food is sent to the in-house bio-gas plant for decomposition to make manure. Awareness programs to reduce food wastage are done regularly. A notice board mentioning the amount of daily food wastage is displayed outside the dining hall to create a sense of responsibility among the community.
