Promotion of

Food Science, Nutrition and Dietetics

under the auspices of

Department of Home and Health Sciences

Research Interests and Areas:

The National Nutrition and health surveys conducted so far reveal that vulnerable groups of Pakistani community such as women and children along with elderly population suffer from both under and mal-nutrition, easing grounds for a number of other malnutrition related disorders. On average, one out of every three children in Pakistan has been reported to be malnourished. Another aspect of malnutrition i.e., over nutrition or obesity is also observed in Urban population and the prevalence of obesity among adults aged 25-64 years, moving from low to middle to high socioeconomic status is 21%, 27% and 42% respectively.

The medical officers in practice have direct contact with these targeted groups in the community but during their five years of basic medical training, they go through heavy syllabus of curative nature with little emphasis on preventive health care and nutritional aspects. The need of the preventive health concepts with more emphasis on nutrition arises more during their practices of medicine at various health outlets such as Basic Health Units, Rural Health Centre and Mother and Child Health Centre.

Department of Home and Health Sciences is focusing on research based nutrition programmes that will motivate and create a consciousness among the in-service health professionals and nutritional experts involved in teaching Postgraduate level programmes to undertake good nutritional care of the community. Currently the research is being carried out in the following areas:

• Infant feeding practices
• Nutritional status-Assessment
• Clinical Nutrition
• Diabetes Mellitus
• Anemia
• Malnutrition
• Food habits of different population groups
• Dietary fibres
• Renal diseases etc.
• Sports Nutrition
• Obesity
• Food Science
• Dairy technology
• Food microbiology
• Food preservation
• Food fortification

* See the abstracts in the “Thesis abstract section”

The department aims to focus more on following areas in future:

• Leading micronutrient deficiencies in Pakistan i.e., iron, zinc, iodine, Vitamin A.
• Chronic diseases like Cardiovascular diseases, Hypertension, Hepatitis, Diabetes Mellitus, Renal diseases etc.
• Dietary guidelines
• Causes of malnutrition
• Food choices and dietary intervention
• Water born diseases
• Sports Nutrition
• Food Microbiology
• Nutritive Value of Pakistani Foods
• Portion sizes of different foods acceptable to the community
• Cost effective menu planning for Pakistani community