The period from pregnancy through the first few years of life is critical in shaping lifelong health, growth and development. Nutritional deficits during this
window can have lasting and often irreversible consequences. Child undernutrition in India persists due to poor diet quality and low dietary intake, making
strengthened maternal nutrition and early childhood nutrition critical to breaking the intergenerational impact of malnutrition.
The Tata Trusts support efforts to improve maternal and early childhood nutrition by strengthening diet quality, feeding practices and care environments
that enable optimal growth and development. Through evidence-based approaches, improved dietary assessment and targeted nutrition programmes, we
work to improve nutritional status and give every child the healthiest possible start in life.
Change Engines
Strengthening infant and young child nutrition to promote healthy
growth, prevent stunting, wasting, underweight and support early
childhood development through optimised Take-Home Rations (THR)
and enhanced Infant and Young Child Feeding practices, with a focus on
energy-dense, nutrient-rich diets in early childhood. Age-appropriate
quantity, diet diversity, and quality through nutrient and calorie-dense
foods, such as milk and fat supplementation etc., allows better
nutritional outcomes. Hands-on support for mother-child dyads and
capacity building of Anganwadi and other frontline workers for children
under 3 years, offer potential to improve child growth while protecting
against the risk of overnutrition and overweight.
Supporting the development and optimisation of energy-dense nutrition solutions for children with Severe Acute
Malnutrition (SAM) and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM),
as well as underweight children, designed to deliver higher
nutrition per gram and enable effective catch-up growth.

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Supporting safe, community-based childcare models that
ensure adequate nutrition, early stimulation, and care
for young children while enabling women with time for
gaining skills and livelihoods.

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Optimising nutrition for women during pregnancy, especially
from underserved areas, through improving maternal diet
quality and adequacy, and dietary diversity and thereby
reducing adverse birth outcome such as low birth weight.
Through these interventions, the Tata Trusts seek to improve the nutritional
status of women and young children by increasing the intake of energy- and
nutrient-dense foods, improving dietary adequacy, food frequency and
dietary diversity, supporting improved gestational weight gain and birth
outcomes, and reducing the prevalence of stunting, underweight and
wasting among children.