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National Nutrition Week 2026 is observed across India from 1 to 7 September, the annual awareness week run by the Food and Nutrition Board under the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The observance began in 1982 and each year promotes balanced diets, dietary diversity, micronutrients and maternal and child feeding practices through anganwadis, schools and health institutions.
It opens a wider nutrition calendar: Rashtriya Poshan Maah runs through the whole of September under Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0.
NFHS-6 (2023-24) shows stunting among under-five children down from 35.5% to 29.3%, but underweight almost flat at 31.8% and wasting near 19%.
India carries a double burden: persistent undernutrition and anaemia alongside rising overweight and diet-related disease.
Launched on 8 March 2018 to reduce stunting, undernutrition, anaemia and low birth weight through convergence and a Jan Andolan approach
Key: Works through targets, technology-based monitoring and community mobilisation rather than a new food-delivery channel
Umbrella scheme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development carrying supplementary nutrition and the Poshan campaigns
Key: Rashtriya Poshan Maah is run under it every September
Month-long September campaign for mass sensitisation on nutrition
Key: Special focus on women, children and adolescent girls
Fortnight-long nutrition awareness and behaviour-change campaign
Key: The shorter counterpart to the September Poshan Maah
Promotes safe, healthy and sustainable food choices
Key: Run by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)
Prevention and control of anaemia across its target groups
Key: Combines screening, iron-folic acid supplementation, treatment and behaviour-change communication
Stunting is low height-for-age and records chronic, cumulative deprivation. It is the slow indicator and is very hard to reverse after the first 1,000 days. Wasting is low weight-for-height and records acute, recent deprivation such as illness or a food shock, and can appear and disappear within months. Underweight is low weight-for-age and mixes the two, which is why it can stay flat even while stunting falls. That is exactly the NFHS-6 pattern: a sharp fall in stunting alongside an almost unchanged underweight figure says long-run conditions improved while short-run shocks did not.
Simple Analogy: Stunting is the height mark on the doorframe that never caught up; wasting is this month's weight after a bad fever.
GS Paper 2 > Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health; Government policies and interventions
General Awareness > Important Days and Government Schemes
General Awareness > Current Affairs and Schemes
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Important Days
Low height-for-age; a marker of chronic, long-term undernutrition
Low weight-for-height; a marker of acute, recent undernutrition
The coexistence of undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency with overweight, obesity and diet-related non-communicable disease in the same population
The people's-movement approach used by POSHAN Abhiyaan to make nutrition a shared community responsibility rather than only a service delivered by the state