Strengthening Nutrition Education and Research Capacity in Universities in Nepal (NERC) 

The NERC project team members and project board members from the two partner departments of Tribhuvan University came for a visit to Tampere University in September. The Nepalese board members Amod Poudyal, Jaya Laxmi Pradhan and Narayan Khanal met the Finnish board members Meri Koivusalo and Salla Atkins for the first time face-to-face. The project coordinators, project officers and supervising teachers presented the progress made to date, shared the challenges faced and discussed the future plans with the board members.

On 6^th September, the whole project group visited the funder’s representatives at the Ministry of Education in Helsinki. This was the first physical meeting with Anne Peltonen, Sanna Takala and Maija Airas. We presented the progress in the NERC project so far and got some valuable feedback from them. In the afternoon, we visited the National Institute for Health and Welfare and met Finnish food composition database expert Heli Reinivuo and other senior team members Heli Tapanainen and Suvi Virtanen. Our project officers presented our Nepalese food composition database work to them in more detail. We discussed many questions and got good technical suggestions for solving some challenging issues. 

The project officers started working on finalizing the documentation process of the food composition database work. We reviewed the previously calculated recipes and their documentation. A common template was developed to document all steps of the recipe calculation work in a uniform and precise way.  We also reviewed various guidelines (published by the Food and Agriculture Organization and European Food Safety Authority), food composition tables and scientific articles regarding food classification and descriptions used. This enables us to code food items and calculate recipes for our food composition database in a scientific and accurate way.

During these weeks, the NERC project teachers focused on curriculum development of courses related to dietary measurement methods, food security and sustainable food systems. We reviewed the current curricula of the partner departments, identified courses related to these three topics, assessed the objectives and contents of the courses, and made suggestions how to revise the contents. We reviewed the teaching and learning methods on those courses and discussed possibilities to improve them further. We also planned what new equipment to purchase for the implementation of the revised courses and how to support vulnerable students in the partner departments.

From 19^th to 24^th February, 2024, Tarja Kinnunen, Praju Adhikari and Bidhya Acharya from Tampere University, and Neeti Kayastha and Aruna Gyawali from Central Department of Home Sciences, Tribhuvan University participated in a week long course “Production, management and use of food composition data on nutrition” organized by South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) FOODS regional center in association with Indian Council of Medical Research, and National Institute of Nutrition, in Hyderabad, India. 

It was a great learning opportunity right at the beginning of the project. We completed the pre-assignment, attended lectures and participated in group tasks, discussions and presentations on topics regarding every step involved in development of a food composition database. There was a separate session for recipe calculation which is the backbone of our project. We got an opportunity to ask questions, learn from experts and tell them about our work. We also built connections with experts in the field of food composition database development which will be very useful for us in the future.