Sadhana Ghimire, 23, makes sure to give her 18-month-old daughter nutritious food, such as porridge containing grains and pulses, in order to prevent stunting. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By José Graziano da Silva and Margaret Chan
ROME/GENEVA, Nov 13 2014 (IPS)

The scourge of malnutrition affects the most vulnerable in society, and it hurts most in the earliest stages of life. Today, more than 800 million people are chronically hungry, about 11 percent of the global population.

Undernutrition is the underlying cause of almost half of all child deaths, and a quarter of living children are stunted due to inadequate nutrition. Micronutrient deficiencies – due to diets lacking in vitamins and minerals, also known as “hidden hunger” – affects two billion people.Our food systems are simply not sustainable or healthy today, let alone in 2050, when we will have to feed more than nine billion people. We need to produce more food but also nutritious food and to do so in ways that safeguard the capacity of future generations to feed themselves.

Another worrying form of malnutrition – obesity – is on the rise. More than 500 million adults are obese as a result of diets containing excess fat, sugars and salt.

This exposes people to a greater risk of noncommunicable diseases – like heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer – now the top causes of death in the world. Poor diet and physical inactivity also account for 10 percent of the global burden of disease.

Many developing countries now face multiple burdens of malnutrition, with people living in the same communities – sometimes even the same households – suffering from undernutrition, hidden hunger and obesity.

These numbers are shocking and must serve as a global call to action.

Besides the terrible human suffering, unhealthy diets also have a detrimental impact on the ability of countries to develop and prosper – the cost of malnutrition, in all its forms, is estimated between four and five percent of global GDP.

Government leaders, scientists, nutritionists, farmers, civil society and private sector representatives from around the world will gather in Rome from Nov. 19 to 21 for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2). It is an opportunity they cannot afford to miss: making peoples’ right to a healthy diet a global reality.

Current food systems are unsustainable and unhealthy

Creating healthy and sustainable food systems is key to overcoming malnutrition in all its forms – from hunger to obesity.

Food production has tripled since 1945, while average food availability per person has risen by only 40 percent. Our food systems have succeeded in increasing production, however, this has come at a high environmental cost and has not been enough to end hunger.

Meanwhile, food systems have continued to evolve with an even greater proportion of food being processed and traded, leading to greater availability of foods with high energy, fats, sugars and salt.

Our food systems are simply not sustainable or healthy today, let alone in 2050, when we will have to feed more than nine billion people. We need to produce more food but also nutritious food and to do so in ways that safeguard the capacity of future generations to feed themselves.

Put simply: we need healthy and sustainable food systems – that produce the right balance of foods, in sufficient quantity and quality, and that is accessible to all – if we want to lead healthy, productive and sustainable lives.

Acting now

In preparation for ICN2, countries have agreed to a Political Declaration and a Framework for Action on nutrition containing concrete recommendations to develop coherent public policies in agriculture, trade, social protection, education and health that promote healthy diets and better nutrition at all stages of life.

The Framework for Action gives governments a plan for developing and implementing national policies and investments throughout the food chain to ensure healthy, diverse and balanced diets for all.

This can include strengthening local food production and processing, especially by family farmers and small-scale producers, and linking it to school meals; reducing fat, sugars and salt in processed food; having schools and other public institutions offer healthy diets; protecting children from marketing of unhealthy foods and drinks; and allowing people to make informed choices regarding what they eat.

While government health, agriculture, and education ministries should take the lead, this task includes all involved in producing, distributing and selling food.

The ICN2 Framework for Action also suggests greater investments to guarantee universal access to effective nutrition interventions, such as protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding, and increasing nutrients available to mothers.

Countries can start implementing these actions now. The first step is to establish national nutrition targets to implement already agreed-upon global targets, as set out in the Framework for Action. ICN2 is the time and place to make these commitments.

FAO and WHO are ready to assist countries in this effort. By transforming commitment into action and cooperating more effectively with one another and with other stakeholders, the world has a real chance of ending the multiple burdens of malnutrition in all its forms within a generation.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Courtesy of Howarth Bouis

By Howarth Bouis
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2014 (IPS)

“We are especially distressed by the high prevalence and increasing numbers of malnourished children under five years of age in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. Moreover, more than 2000 million people, mostly women and children, are deficient in one or more micronutrients…”

These words are from the Final Report of the International Conference on Nutrition that took place in December 1992 in Rome.The distress is felt most by the poor, whose response is to cut down on the more expensive micronutrient-rich foods while making sure the household gets by on stomach-filling staples.

Twenty-two years later, government representatives from around the world will again gather in Rome for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) and will have to contend with the reality that despite reducing the percentage of people suffering from micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) deficiencies, about the same absolute number of people – two billion – are still not getting the micronutrients that are essential for good health.

This is still too high a number; being deprived of essential micronutrients in the first thousand days from conception to a child’s second birthday can result in stunting, lowered IQ, and repeated bouts of illness that reduce lifelong productivity and keep generations in poverty and poor health.

So, today, we still face many of the same challenges as we did more than two decades ago. These have been further exacerbated by population growth, food price volatility and climate change, among other issues. Here are a few trends or factors that stand out today, and must be accounted for as we look to end hunger and malnutrition.

While population has grown, per capita incomes have increased in many countries. Staple food prices have fallen over the long run due to increased productivity from the Green Revolution, but non-staple food prices have risen. Thus, calories have become cheaper, but minerals and vitamins have become more expensive.

The distress is felt most by the poor, whose response is to cut down on the more expensive micronutrient-rich foods while making sure the household gets by on stomach-filling staples. To make matters worse, in recent years we’ve seen a disturbing trend where even the prices of key staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize that provide most of the global calories, have shot up.

Climate-induced changes and natural disasters will lead to more volatility in food production and, thus, price variability. The poorest households are least able to absorb shocks. As such, building resilience has emerged as a critical priority that requires greater alignment and collaboration with diverse partners to protect those who are most vulnerable from shocks.

One way to increase nutritional resilience is to make our food systems more nutrition-smart. Our food systems have to be calibrated to provide the greatest amount of nutrients per square foot of scarce land that can be produced sustainably, especially in the face of climate change.

This means growing more nutritious foods that include staple foods with enhanced micronutrient content that are proving efficacious in reducing micronutrient deficiencies. We have to build agricultural, and therefore dietary, diversity back into the system so that there is a ‘rebalancing’ of calories with micronutrients.

Being nutrition-smart means we also pay attention to growth in obesity, which today exists side by side with undernutrition.

The lessons learned in the past two decades show that there is no silver bullet. Integrated nutrition and public health interventions, and poverty alleviation social reforms are necessary to achieve good nutrition for all.

We have to more efficiently break down the silos between agriculture, nutrition and health food and health systems in order to improve people’s lives. The good news is that we have made significant strides. Twenty-two years ago, agricultural and nutrition scientists did not talk to each other very much. Now they do, and even more of that collaborative conversation and action are needed.

It pleases me greatly that global awareness has been building up over the past five years about how crucial nutrition is. The Copenhagen Consensus, a gathering every four years of top economists in the world, has twice put the reduction of micronutrient deficiencies at the top of their lists as the best use of public money, and have conservatively estimated a 59:1 dollar benefit-cost ratio.

I am heartened by global movements like Scaling Up Nutrition that are galvanising communities around the world to expand nutrition interventions that work, and by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge to eliminate hunger in our lifetime. As a global society, we cannot afford to let this momentum wane as other crises or trends command attention.

Achieving better nutrition is a multi-faceted endeavour. I have emphasised here the importance of making our food systems more nutrition-smart. And as the tagline for ICN2 states: better nutrition means better lives. There are of course complementary themes deserving of similar attention.

But this is what the delegates in Rome will have to tackle next week when, as the materials for the upcoming ICN2 suggest, coherence and collaboration must be built into any new frameworks and plans to improve nutrition. I look forward to being there, and to learning from the experience, the expertise and the insights of delegates from around the world.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Children in northern Pakistan line up for food rations. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

Continued growth in developing countries, along with poverty-reduction policies, have helped to improve both income and food security globally.

Still, eradicating hunger remains an enormous challenge that has an impact on every other attempt to improve lives.

An estimated 842 million people were found to be chronically hungry between 2011 and 2013. Globally, one in eight people are unable to gain regular access to enough food to be able to study, work, ward off disease, and otherwise live healthy and productive lives.

Malnutrition has a price tag. It could cost as much as five percent of global income – 3.5 trillion dollars, or 500 dollars per person – in terms of lost productivity and healthcare expenses.
Agriculture remains the key pathway to improving both access to food and income for most vulnerable families worldwide. Policies aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and rural development, especially when smallholder producers are targeted, can help to create employment opportunities and achieve hunger reduction — even where poverty remains widespread.

But the quest for better lives must necessarily address another, often intertwined issue, that of malnutrition in all its forms. 
At least two billion people suffer from various vitamin and mineral deficiencies and related diseases. Malnutrition undermines wellbeing at all ages, and is seen as the underlying cause of death for some 2.6 million children annually.

In some of the world’s most vibrant and influential developing countries, malnutrition is threatening the next generation of parents, teachers, scientists and leaders.

Inadequate nutrition causes stunting, weakened immune systems and difficulties in learning and concentration. If having access to enough food is necessary for a person’s survival, then getting an adequate combination of safe and nutritious foods is fundamental to his or her future, and to the wellbeing, health and development of entire communities and economies.

Some progress has been made in reducing hunger over the past two decades, as measured by the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) objective of halving the prevalence of dietary energy undernourishment by 2015. Already, about 60 countries have achieved the target against 1990-91 benchmarks, or are on track to do so.

There has been progress, too, in combating malnutrition. Child stunting – a key indicator of malnutrition – has declined, but if present trends continue, half a billion more children will still experience stunted growth over the next 15 years.

Meanwhile, around one-and-a half billion people are overweight, with half a billion deemed obese, and hence, more vulnerable to diet-related non-communicable diseases.

Malnutrition has a price tag. It could cost as much as five percent of global income – 3.5 trillion dollars, or 500 dollars per person – in terms of lost productivity and healthcare expenses.

All this makes nutrition a public issue. And the conversation about malnutrition and hunger may be scientific, social and economic, but above all, it is political.

Tackling malnutrition

Good nutrition starts with access to nutritious food. Food systems must be improved in ways that make nutritious foods available and affordable to people throughout their lives, as shown by the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) most recent ‘State of Food and Agriculture’ report.

But overcoming malnutrition in all its forms – caloric undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity – requires a combination of appropriate interventions in food systems, public health, education and social protection to guarantee availability and access to nutritious food, reduce the vulnerability of poor populations to disease, and improve consumer awareness of the sources of good nutrition.

Food systems must place extra priority on meeting the special needs of mothers and young children. Malnutrition during the critical first 1,000 days from conception can cause permanent physical and cognitive impairment in children and lasting damage to mothers’ health.

In most governments, nutrition lacks a natural home and a responsible official. Nutrition is a public issue and tackling it is a complex task requiring strong political commitment, leadership at the highest levels, as well as unprecedented cooperation and coordination among various ministries and partners.

Turning up the volume

Fortunately, policymakers and community leaders around the world are making some progress in turning up the volume of the conversation on malnutrition and placing the topic, along with food security, at the apex of the international development agenda.

The U.N. Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge, launched in 2012 at the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference, recognised the intrinsic link between development and proper nutrition for all. It calls for a world without hunger, no more stunting, zero food waste and loss, sustainable agriculture and a doubling of poor farmers’ incomes.

Food security and nutrition have also been placed squarely at the center of discussions to define the work of the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda; and at high-level meetings hosted in London in 2013 by the UK and Brazilian governments.

The volume of the conversation on nutrition is about to be notched up further. On Nov. 19-21, the FAO, World Health Organisation (WHO) and others in the U.N. system will co-organise the inter-governmental Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), 22 years after the first one in 1992.

ICN2 will establish the bases for sustained international cooperation and improved policy coordination to overcome malnutrition. It should also help to ensure that different voices are heard in the debate. While governments have the final say on policy matters, non-state actors have important contributions to make to the multi-dimensional challenge of improving nutrition.

By cooperating more effectively, we have a real chance of ending this blight on humanity within a generation. But only if the conversation turns to concrete, consistent action that reaches every family.

*José Graziano da Silva is the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome.

Camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in northern Pakistan are breeding grounds for malnutrition. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
ROME, Jun 6 2013 (IPS)

Between 2010 and 2012, 868 million people worldwide were deemed hungry by a conservative definition. This figure represents only a small fraction of the world’s population whose health and lives are blighted by malnutrition.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, assistant director-general for economic and social development at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Credit: @FAO/Giulio Napolitano

Currently, malnutrition is believed to be the underlying cause of death for 2.6 million children annually. Meanwhile, two billion people lack adequate micronutrients – vitamins and minerals – that are essential for their mental and physical development.

A quarter of the children in the world, and a third in developing countries, are stunted because they do not get the right nutrients. Four in five of these malnourished children are in just 20 countries, including almost half of Indian children under five.

In Nigeria, over half of the poorest children are stunted, while in China, children in poor rural counties are six times more likely to be stunted than urban children. In Indonesia, a sharp rise in wasting – or acute malnutrition – in the wake of recent food crises has hit children from the poorest households hardest.

Receiving the right nutrients in the first years of life is not only a matter of life and death, but also a major determinant of future life chances – potentially raising future earnings by a fifth. Today, about 170 million children under five are stunted because they do not get the right nutrients, while their cognitive and physical development is impaired.

Some progress has been made in reducing hunger over the past two decades. With a strong final push, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) objective of halving the prevalence of hunger by 2015 is within reach. Already, 51 countries have achieved the target, or are on track to do so.

With modest progress over the past two decades, the share of stunted children declined from 40 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2010. And if present trends continue, half a billion more children will be stunted in the next 15 years.

Meanwhile, around one and a half billion people are overweight, with half a billion deemed obese, and hence, more vulnerable to serious non-communicable diseases. Malnutrition could cost as much as five percent of global income – 3.5 trillion dollars, or 500 dollars per person – in terms of lost productivity and health care expenses.

What should we do to eradicate malnutrition? The 2013 report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisaion (FAO), ‘The State of Food and Agriculture: Food systems for better nutrition’, shows the way forward. Good nutrition must start with food production. Improved food systems must make nutritious foods affordable.

Overcoming malnutrition – caloric undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies, obesity – requires appropriate interventions in food systems, public health, education and social protection. Tackling malnutrition is a complex task requiring strong political commitment, leadership at the highest levels, and unprecedented cooperation and coordination among various ministries and partners.

Better organised food systems are key to more diversified and healthier diets. Policy must ensure that all people have informed access to a wide range of nutritious foods to make healthy choices. Consumers need help making better dietary choices for improved nutrition with regulation, education, information and other interventions.

Food systems must become more sensitive to the special needs of mothers and young children. Malnutrition during the critical first 1,000 days from conception can cause permanent physical and cognitive impairment in children and lasting damage to the mothers’ health.

Food security and nutrition are now at the apex of the international development agenda. In June 2012, the United Nations Secretary General made the call to set the ambitious but feasible goal of zero hunger. The Zero Hunger Challenge calls for a world without hunger, no more stunting, minimal food waste and losses, sustainable agriculture and doubling poor farmers’ incomes.

On Jun. 8, the governments of Brazil and the United Kingdom will co-host a high-level pre-G8 meeting entitled ‘Nutrition for Growth: Beating Hunger through Business and Science’ in London. UK Prime Minister David Cameron intends to follow up by sponsoring a high-level global panel on agriculture and food systems for nutrition.

On Nov. 19-21, 2014, the FAO, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and others in the U.N. system will co-organise the inter-governmental International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), 22 years after the first one in 1992, to establish the bases for sustained international cooperation and policy coordination to overcome malnutrition. The preparatory technical meeting on Nov. 13-15 this year will establish the evidence base for this purpose.

Malnutrition’s time has come. By cooperating effectively, we have a real chance of ending this blight on humanity within a generation.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt: