Health Conscious Corporate World

Up until now, I have been telling you about the nutritional values of various vegetables and fruits. Along the way I have been visiting and talking about Healthy Diet at many a companies, schools, on air on Akashvani Mangalore and a few other places. The reception has been nothing short of great. People have shown extreme keeness to diet counselling. In this blog I would like to share some excerpts from my visit to one of them this past weekend.

I was invited by Hindustan Unilever Company(previously know as Hindustan Lever Limited) at Mangalore to take a session on nutrition to their staffs and their family. What would HLL gain by doing this you ask? Companies across the world are recognizing the value of having healthy employees. Healthy employees result in higher morale which results in higher productivity. Healthy minds can be creative/innovative. Families of the employees being healthy keeps the employees from being distracted during work. Did I mention the work in corporate world these days is full of pressure, extended hours and global competition?

I chatted up a little bit with Naveen Kumar, HR executive at HUC, who sponsored this session. He, while being pioneer in leading this initiative in his company, told me that the key objective of this session, from HUC's point of view, was to bring about an awareness of health, help employees implement discipline in food habits. Employers like HUC in that regard are setting the trend of being a caring employer and good citizen.

Most of attendees (~40) who attended my session had queries around blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and other health related side effects of food habits gone awry. It was a very interactive session with active participation with lots of good questions during the Q&A session. All the attendees had enough notice and had come prepared with good questions.

During the first half we covered the various food groups, effects of cooking on nutritive values, how to keep fit by eating good food etc... Based on them being quiet if I thought they were probably lulled by a break from their hectic schedule, I was wrong. They were digesting all that I had to offer.

In the second half, the Q&A session, each of them seemed to have come up with three questions of their own. Here is a small summary of the questions

1. The most frequently asked question was " How does I loose weight and look good?". This was no different from the other sessions I have been conducting especially coming from the ladies. Almost 90% of the ladies want to get back to their pre-pregnancy weight .



2. Second question was " I am a diabetic patient , what should be my threshold for sugar intak each a day?",



3. Can i eat pickle if I have hypertension?" and like this questions went on.

I was happy that people are starting to pay attention to their health are raising their concerns.
This is a positive sign and I offered them some of the very tips that I have been offering. The motto being "Healthy food, Regular exercise would keep people healthy and healthy people look fresh and young".