Julio Berdegué, FAO representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, presents the region's Panorama of Food and Nutrition 2018 in Santiago, which has bad news due to the increase in hunger, malnutrition, overweight and obesity for the third consecutive year. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Nov 7 2018 (IPS)

“For the third consecutive year there is bad news” for Latin America and the Caribbean, where the numbers of hungry people have increased to “39.3 million people,” or 6.1 percent of the population, Julio Berdegué, FAO’s regional representative, said Wednesday.

At the regional headquarters of the United Nations agency in Santiago, Berdegué presented the conclusions of the Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security 2018, which brings more bad news: malnutrition and obesity also increased, in a situation closely linked to the persistence of inequality in the countries of the region.

The report was prepared jointly by the regional division of four U.N. agencies: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation), the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Food Programme (WFP).

The four organisations called on governments in the region to implement public policies that combat inequality and promote healthy and sustainable food systems."There is no material or scientific reason to justify hunger...We are issuing a wake-up call to governments and societies." -- Julio Berdegué

“There is no material or scientific reason to justify hunger,” Berdegué said during the presentation, pointing out that for the past five years, no progress has been made in the region, and that it has in fact slid backwards for the past three years.

“We are issuing a wake-up call to governments and societies,” he said.

The regional representative highlighted the case of Colombia where “peace has begun to pay dividends in the eradication of hunger,” referring to the positive effects of the peace deal reached by the government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016.

At the other extreme, Venezuela became one of the countries with the greatest number of hungry people: 3.7 million – 11.7 percent of the population.

Since 2014, the number of undernourished people has grown in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela. The largest rise occurred in Venezuela, with an increase of 600,000 people from 2014 to 2017, according to the Panorama.

Other countries severely affected by hunger are Haiti – five million people, equivalent to 45.7 percent of the population – and Mexico – 4.8 million people, representing 3.8 percent of the population.

However, in both Haiti and Mexico, hunger has declined in the last three years. The same is true in Colombia and the Dominican Republic. But these are the only four countries in the region that managed to reduce hunger since 2014.

“If Haiti can do it (reduce hunger), all of the other countries can, too,” Berdegué said emphatically.

According to the Panorama, the rate at which the number of hungry people in the region grew accelerated: between 2015 and 2016 the number of undernourished increased by 200,000, but between 2016 and 2017, it grew by twice that number: 400,000 people.

For Berdegué, the numbers are dramatic because “it’s not about being closer to the goal of zero hunger (by 2030). The goal is not a few less hungry people,” he said, noting that this is a food-producing and -exporting region, where “there is no lack of food, what is missing is money to buy it.”

He added that serious food insecurity affects 47.1 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, and said “the worst thing is that most of them live in South America, the richest part of the region. How is it possible that 62 percent of the hungry are in South America?”

The report establishes a close link between economic and social inequality and higher levels of hunger, obesity and malnutrition.

Five million children suffer from hunger, children in the poorest segment of the population, who are “condemned to a very limited life,” Berdegué said.

He pointed out that the four U.N. agencies found a correlation between hunger and belonging to some ethnic groups.

Referring to indigenous groups, he noted that “In Peru, 25 percent of Quechua children and 23 percent of Aymara children suffer from chronic malnutrition, while at the national level the proportion is 16 percent.”

At the same time, the number of obese people is growing by 3.6 million each year, and today one in four adults in the region are obese. And some 250 million people are overweight: 60 percent of the regional population.

Overweight affects 3.9 million children under the age of five, more than the global average of 5.6 per cent, the report says.

“It’s a rampant and out of control epidemic. We have never eaten so badly. We have to make a shift towards a healthy and nutritious diet,” Berdegué said.

He added that 18 countries in the region produce fruits and vegetables, but export most of them.

“It is essential to regulate fats and salt content in food. There are many people who can’t afford to eat healthy. School curricula should include healthy eating,” Berdegué said, suggesting possible solutions to deal with the epidemic.

Carissa F. Etienne, director of PAHO, said that “although malnutrition persists in the region, particularly in vulnerable populations, obesity and overweight also particularly affect these groups.”

“A multisectoral approach is needed, ranging from ensuring access to balanced and healthy food to addressing other social factors that also impact on these forms of malnutrition, such as access to education, water and sanitation, and health services,” she said in a connection from the organisation’s Washington headquarters.

In her view, “we must make progress in access to universal health so that all people can receive the care and prevention measures they need with regard to malnutrition and its long-term consequences.”

The Panorama states that hunger, malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity especially affect lower-income people, women, indigenous people, blacks and rural families in the region.

In Latin America, 8.4 percent of women face severe food insecurity, compared to 6.9 percent of men, and indigenous populations are more food insecure than non-indigenous populations.

In 10 countries, children from the poorest 20 percent of households suffer three times more stunting than the richest 20 percent.

According to the report, one of the main causes of the rise in malnutrition among particularly vulnerable population groups is changes in the region’s food systems and food cycle from production to consumption.

The greatest effects occur in the most excluded sectors which, although they have increased their consumption of healthy foods such as milk and meat, often have to opt for products high in fats, sugar and salt because they are cheaper.

With respect to the gender divide, the Panorama reports that 19 million women suffer from severe food insecurity, compared to 15 million men.

In all of the countries, the obesity rate for adult women is higher than for men; in 19 countries, the obesity rate for women is at least 10 percentage points higher than for men.

“Gender equity is a valuable policy instrument to reduce inequalities. We need to strengthen it in practice, which involves promoting equality in access to and control of household resources, as well as in decisions to empower women,” said Miguel Barreto, WFP regional director, from Panama City.

A girl helps her family peeling cassava in Acará, in the northeast of Brazil's Amazon jungle. More than five million children are chronically malnourished in Latin America, a region sliding backwards with respect to the goal of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, while obesity, which affects seven million children, is on the rise. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Oct 14 2018 (IPS)

For the third consecutive year, South America slid backwards in the global struggle to achieve zero hunger by 2030, with 39 million people living with hunger and five million children suffering from malnutrition.

“It’s very distressing because we’re not making progress. We’re not doing well, we’re going in reverse. You can accept this in a year of great drought or a crisis somewhere, but when it’s happened three years in a row, that’s a trend,” reflected Julio Berdegué, FAO’s highest authority in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The regional representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations said it is cause for concern that it is not Central America, the poorest subregion, that is failing in its efforts, but the South American countries that have stagnated."More than five million children in Latin America are permanently malnourished. In a continent of abundant food, a continent of upper-middle- and high-income countries, five million children ... It's unacceptable." -- Julio Berdegué

“More than five million children in Latin America are permanently malnourished. In a continent of abundant food, a continent of upper-middle- and high-income countries, five million children … It’s unacceptable,” he said in an interview with IPS at the agency’s regional headquarters in Santiago.

“They are children who already have scars in their lives. Children whose lives have already been marked, even though countries, governments, civil society, NGOs, churches, and communities are working against this. The development potential of a child whose first months and years of life are marked by malnutrition is already radically limited for his entire life,” he said.

What can the region do to move forward again? In line with this year’s theme of World Food Day, celebrated Oct. 16, “Our actions are our future. A zero hunger world by 2030 is possible”, Berdegué underlined the responsibility of governments and society as a whole.

Governments, he said, must “call us all together, facilitate, support, promote job creation and income generation, especially for people from the weakest socioeconomic strata.”

In addition, he stressed that policies for social protection, peace and the absence of conflict and addressing climate change are also required.

New foods to improve nutrition

In the small town of Los Muermos, near Puerto Montt, 1,100 kilometers south of Santiago, nine women and two male algae collectors are working to create new foods, with the aim of helping to curb both under- and over-nutrition, in Chile and in neighboring countries. Their star product is jam made with cochayuyo (Durvillaea antarctica), a large bull kelp species that is the dominant seaweed in southern Chile.

“I grew up on the water. I’ve been working along the sea for more than 30 years, as a shore gatherer,” said Ximena Cárcamo, 48, president of the Flor del Mar fishing cooperative.

Julio Berdegué, FAO regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, in his office at the agency’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile, during an interview with IPS to discuss the setback with regard to reaching the zero hunger target in the region. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The seaweed gatherer told IPS from Los Muermos about the great potential of cochayuyo and other algae “that boost health and nutrition because they have many benefits for people,” in a region with high levels of poverty and social vulnerability, which translate into under-nutrition.

“We are adding value to products that we have in our locality. We want people to consume them and that’s why we made jam because children don’t eat seaweed and in Chile we have so many things that people don’t consume and that could help improve their diet,” she explained.

In the first stage, the women, with the support of the Aquaculture and Fishing Centre for Applied Research, identified which seaweed have a high nutritional value, are rich in minerals, proteins, fiber and vitamins, and have low levels of sugar.

The seaweed gatherers created a recipe book, “cooking with seaweed from the sea garden”, including sweet and salty recipes such as cochayuyo ice cream, rice pudding and luche and reineta ceviche with sea chicory.

Now the project aims to create high value-added food such as energy bars.

“We want to reach schools, where seaweed is not consumed. That’s why we want to mix them with dried fruit from our sector,” said Cárcamo, insisting that a healthy and varied diet introduced since childhood is the way to combat malnutrition, as well as the “appalling” levels of overweight and obesity that affects Chile, as well as the rest of Latin America.

The paradox of obesity

“Obesity is killing us…it kills more people than organised crime,” Berdegué warned, pointing out that in terms of nutrition the region is plagued by under-nutrition on the one hand and over-nutrition on the other.

“Nearly 60 percent of the region’s population is overweight. There are 250 million candidates for diabetes, colon cancer or stroke,” he said.

He explained that “there are 105 million obese people, who are key candidates for these diseases. More than seven million children are obese with problems of self-esteem and problems of emotional and physical development. They are children who are candidates to die young,” he said.

According to Berdegué, this problem “is growing wildly…there are four million more obese people in the region each year.”

A seaweed gatherer carries cochayuyo harvested from rocks along Chile’s Pacific coast. The cultivation and commercialisation of cochayuyo and other kinds of seaweed is being promoted in different coastal areas of the country, to provide new foods to improve nutrition in the country. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The latest statistic for 2016 reported 105 million obese people in Latin America and the Caribbean, up from 88 million only four years earlier.

In view of this situation, the FAO regional representative stressed the need for a profound transformation of the food system.

“How do we produce, what do we produce, what do we import, how is it distributed, what is access like in your neighborhood? What do you do if you live in a neighborhood where the only store, that is 500 meters away, only sells ultra-processed food and does not sell vegetables or fruits?” he asked.

Berdegué harshly criticised “advertising, which tells us every day that good eating is to go sit in a fast food restaurant and eat 2,000 calories of junk as if that were entirely normal.”

Change of policies as well as habits

“You have to change habits, yes, but you have to change policies as well. There are countries, such as the small Caribbean island nations, that depend fundamentally on imported food. And the vast majority of these foods are ultra-processed, many of which are food only in name because they’re actually just chemicals, fats and junk,” he said.

He insisted that “we lack production of fruits, vegetables and dairy products in many countries or trade policies that encourage imports of these foods and not so much junk food.”

And to move toward the goal of zero hunger in just 12 years, Berdegué also called for generating jobs and improving incomes, because that “is the best policy against hunger.”

The second of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which make up the 2030 Development Agenda, is achieving zero hunger through eight specific targets.

Poverty making a comeback

“In Latin America we don’t lack food. People just can’t afford to buy it,” Berdegué said.

He also called for countries to strengthen policies to protect people living in poverty and extreme poverty.

According to the latest figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), poverty in the region grew between 2014 and 2017, when it affected 186 million people, 30.7 percent of the population. Extreme poverty affects 10 percent of the total: 61 million people.

Moreover, in this region where 82 percent of the population is urban, 48.6 percent of the rural population is poor, compared to 26.8 percent of the urban population, and this inequality drives the rural exodus to the cities.

“FAO urges countries to rethink social protection policies, particularly for children. We cannot allow ourselves to slow down in eradicating malnutrition and hunger among children,” Berdegué said.

He also advocated for the need for peace and the cessation of conflicts because “we have all the evidence in the world that when you lose peace, hunger soars. It is automatic. The great hunger hotspots and problems in the world today are in places where we are faced with conflict situations.”

“We have countries in the region where there is upheaval and governments have to know that this social and political turmoil causes hunger,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

A farmer harvests amaranth in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. This grain, of which two of the varieties originated in Mexico, is part of the country's traditional diet and can help boost nutrition among Mexicans, who have been affected by skyrocketing consumption of junk food. Credit: Courtesy of Bridge to Community Health

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 2 2018 (IPS)

Manuel Villegas is one of the peasant farmers who decided to start planting amaranth in Mexico, to complement their corn and bean crops and thus expand production for sale and self-consumption and, ultimately, contribute to improving the nutrition of their communities.

“Amaranth arrived in this part of the country in 2009, and some farmers were already growing it when I began to grow it in 2013. It’s growing, but slowly,” Villegas, who is coordinator of the non-governmental Amaranth Network in the Mixteca region, in the southern state of Oaxaca, told IPS.

This crop has produced benefits such as the organisation of farmers, processors and consumers, the obtaining of public funding, as well as improving the nutrition of both consumers and growers."There was an increase in availability and accessibility of overly-processed foods. The State failed to implement public prevention policies. Children live in an obesogenic environment (an environment that promotes gaining weight and is not conducive to weight loss). It's a vulnerable group and companies take advantage of that to increase their sales," -- Fiorella Espinosa

“We have made amaranth part of our daily diet. It improves the diet because of its nutritional qualities, combined with other high-protein seeds,” said Villegas, who lives in the rural area of the municipality of Tlaxiaco, with about 34,000 inhabitants.

The peasant farmers brought together by the network in their region plant some 40 hectares of amaranth, although the effects of climate change forced them to cut back production to 12 tons in 2017 and six this year, due to a drought affecting the area. To cover their self-consumption, they keep 10 percent of the annual harvest.

Native products such as amaranth, in addition to defending foods from the traditional Mexican diet, help to contain the advance of obesity, which has become an epidemic in this Latin American country of nearly 130 million people, with health, social and economic consequences.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) states in “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018,” published in August, that the prevalence of overweight among children under five fell from nine percent to 5.2 percent between 2012 and 2017. That means that the number of overweight children under that age fell from one million to 600,000.

On the other hand, the prevalence of obesity among the adult population (18 years and older) increased, from 26 percent to 28.4 percent. The number of obese adults went from 20.5 million to 24.3 million during the period.

The consequences of the phenomenon are also clear. One example is that mortality from diabetes type 2, the most common, climbed from 70.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013 to 84.7 in 2016, according to an update of indicators published in May by several institutions, including the health ministry.

Another impact reported in the same study is that deaths from high blood pressure went up from 16 per 100,000 inhabitants to 18.5.

Members of the Alliance for Food Health, a collective of organisations and academics, called in Mexico for better regulation of advertising of junk food aimed at children and of food and beverage labelling, during the launch of the report “A childhood hooked on obesity” in Mexico City in August. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

But the most eloquent and worrying data is that one in three children is obese or overweight, according to a report published in August by the non-governmental Alliance for Food Health, a group of organisations and academics.

What lies behind

Specialists and activists agree that among the root causes of the phenomenon is the change in eating habits, where the traditional diet based on age-old products has gradually been replaced by junk food, high in sugar, salt, fats, artificial colorants and other ingredients, which is injected from childhood through exposure to poorly regulated advertising.

The latest National Health and Nutrition Survey found low proportions of regular consumption of most recommended food groups, such as vegetables, fruits and legumes, in all population groups. For example, 40 percent of the calories children ages one to five eat come from over-processed foods.

For Fiorella Espinosa, a researcher on dietary health at the civil association The Power of Consumers, the liberalisation of trade in Mexico since the 1990s, the lack of regulation of advertising and nutritional labels of products, the displacement of native foods and the prioritisation of extensive farming over traditional farming are factors that led to the crisis.

“There was an increase in availability and accessibility of overly-processed foods. The State failed to implement public prevention policies. Children live in an obesogenic environment (an environment that promotes gaining weight and is not conducive to weight loss). It’s a vulnerable group and companies take advantage of that to increase their sales,” she told IPS.

The 2017 Food Sustainability Index, produced by the Italian non-governmental Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), showed that this country, the second-largest in terms of population and economy in Latin America, has indicators reflecting a prevalence of over-eating, low physical activity and inadequate dietary patterns.

The index, which ranks France first, followed by Japan and Germany, analyses 34 nations with respect to sustainable agriculture, nutritional challenges and food loss and waste.

Obesity “is an epidemic that cannot be solved by nutrition education alone. It has structural determinants, such as the political environment, international trade, the environment and culture. It has social and economic barriers,” Simón Barquera, director of the Nutrition and Health Research Centre at the state-run National Institute of Public Health, told IPS.

Therefore, the Alliance for Food Health proposes a comprehensive strategy against overweight and obesity, which includes a law that incorporates increased taxes on unhealthy products, adequate labelling, better regulation of advertising and promotion of breastfeeding, among other measures.

The contribution of lifesaver crops such as amaranth

The organisations dedicated to the issue also highlight the recovery underway in communities in several states of traditional crops such as amaranth, a plant present in local food for 5,000 years and highly appreciated in the past because its grain contains twice the protein of corn and rice in addition to being rich in vitamins.

“We are looking for ways to generate changes at the community level in agriculture, food and family economy, focused on the cultivation of amaranth. We have realised that there has been a devaluation of the countryside and its role in adequate nutrition,” said Mauricio Villar, director of Social Economy for the non-governmental organisation Bridge to Nutritional Health.

Villar, also the coordinator of the Liaison Group for the Promotion of Amaranth in Mexico ,explained to IPS that “we are increasing our appreciation of peasant life and production, with impacts at different levels on nutrition,” to correct bad eating habits.

But according to Yatziri Zepeda, founder of the non-governmental AliMente Project, these local experiences, no matter how valuable their contribution, are limited in scope.

“These initiatives may generate changes at the local level and address some of the problems, but they are not sufficient to protect the right to health, among others. Obesity is not a matter of individual decisions, but of public policy. It is a political issue, there are very important corporate interests. It is multicausal and systemic,” she told IPS.

Fruit and vegetable prices in South Africa have increased to the point that poorer people have had to remove them from their grocery lists. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 10 2018 (IPS)

Every Sunday afternoon, Thembi Majola* cooks a meal of chicken and rice for her mother and herself in their home in Alexandra, an informal settlement adjacent to South Africa’s wealthy economic hub, Sandton.

“Vegetables is only on Sunday,” Majola tells IPS, adding that these constitute potatoes, sweet potato and pumpkin. Majola, who says she weighs 141 kgs, has trouble walking short distances as it generally leaves her out of breath. And she has been on medication for high blood pressure for almost two decades now.“It is precisely a justice issue because at the very least our economy should be able to provide access to sufficient and nutritious food. Because, at the basis of our whole humanity, at the very basis of our body, is our nutrition." -- Mervyn Abrahams, Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group

“Maize is a first priority,” she says of the staple item that always goes into her shopping basket. “Every Saturday I eat boerewors [South African sausage]. And on Sunday it is chicken and rice. During the week, I eat mincemeat once and then most of the time I fill up my stomach with [instant] cup a soup,” she says of her diet.

Majola is one of about 68 percent of South African women who are overweight or obese, according to the South African Demographic and Health Survey. The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017 ranks 34 countries across three pillars: sustainable agriculture; nutritional challenges; and food loss and waste.  South Africa ranks in the third quartile of the index in 19th place. However, the country has a score of 51 on its ability to address nutritional challenges. The higher the score, the greater the progress the country has made. South Africa’s score is lower than a number of countries on the index.

Families go into debt to pay for basic foods

Many South Africans are eating a similar diet to Majola’s not out of choice, but because of affordability.

Dr. Kirthee Pillay, lecturer of dietetics and human nutrition at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, tells IPS that the increase of carbohydrate-based foods as a staple in most people’s diets is cost-related.

“Fruit and vegetable prices have increased to the point that poorer people have had to remove them from their grocery lists.”

The Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (Pacsa), a social justice non-governmental organisation, noted last October in its annual food barometer report that while the median wage for black South Africans is USD209 a month, a monthly food basket that is nutritionally complete costs USD297.

The report also noted that food expenditure from households arise out of the monies left over after non-negotiable expenses, such as transport, electricity, debt and education needs have been paid first. And this resulted in many families incurring debt in order to meet their food bills.

“Staples are cheaper and more filling and people depend on these, especially when there is less money available for food and many people to feed. Fruit and vegetables are becoming luxury food items for many people given the increasing cost of food. Thus, the high dependence on cheaper, filling staples. However, an excessive intake of carbohydrate-rich foods can increase risk for obesity,” Pillay tells IPS via email.

Majola works at a national supermarket chain, with her only dependent being her elderly mother. She says her grocery bill comes to about USD190 each month, higher than what most average families can afford, but agrees that the current cost of fruit and vegetables are a luxury item for her.

“They are a bit expensive now. Maybe they can sell them at a lesser price,” she says, adding that if she could afford it, she would have vegetables everyday. “Everything comes from the pocket.”

Monopoly of Food Chain Creating a System that Makes People Ill

David Sanders, emeritus professor at the school of public health at the University of the Western Cape, says that South Africans have a very high burden of ill health, much of which is related to their diet.

But he adds that large corporates dominate every node of the food chain in the country, starting from inputs and production, all the way to processing, manufacturing and retail. “So it is monopolised all the way up the food system from the farm to the fork.”

“The food system is creating, for poor people anyway, a quite unhealthy food environment. So for well-off people there is sufficient choice and people can afford a nutritionally-adequate diet, even one of quite high quality.

“But poor people can’t. In most cases, the great majority, don’t have a kind of subsistence farming to fall back on because of land policies and the fact that in the 24 years of democracy there hasn’t been significant development of small scale farming,” Sanders, who is one of the authors of a report on food systems in Brazil, South Africa and Mexico, tells IPS.

According to the report, about 35,000 medium and large commercial farmers produce most of South Africa’s food.

In addition, Sanders points out that a vast majority of rural South Africans purchase, rather than grow, their own food.

“The food they can afford tends to be largely what we call ultra processed or processed food. That often provides sufficient calories but not enough nutrients. It tends to be quite low often in good-quality proteins and low in vitamins and minerals – what we call hyper nutrients.

“So the latter situation results in quite a lot of people becoming overweight and obese. And yet they are poorly nourished,” Sanders explains.

The Sugar Tax Not Enough to Stem Epidemic of Obesity

In April, South Africa introduced the Sugary Beverages Levy, which charges manufacturers 2.1 cents per gram of sugar content that exceeds 4g per 100 ml. The levy is part of the country’s department of health’s efforts to reduce obesity.

Pillay says while it is still too early to tell if the tax will be effective, in her opinion “customers will fork out the extra money being charged for sugar-sweetened beverages. Only the very poor may decide to stop buying them because of cost.”

Sander’s points out “it’s not just the level of obesity, it is the rate at which this has developed that is so alarming.”

A study shows that the number of young South Africans suffering from obesity doubled in the last six years, while it had taken the United States 13 years for this to happen.

“Here is an epidemic of nutrition, diet-related diseases, which has unfolded extremely rapidly and is just as big and as threatening and expensive as the HIV epidemic, and yet it is going largely unnoticed.”

Overweight people have a risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and hypertension, which places them at risk for heart disease. One of South Africa’s largest medical aid schemes estimated in a report that the economic impact on the country was USD50 billion a year.

“Even if people knew what they should eat there is very very little room for manoeuvre. There is some, but not much,” Sanders says adding that people should rather opt to drink water rather than purchase sugary beverages.

“Education and awareness is a factor but I would say that these big economic drivers are much more important.”

Sanders says that questions need to be asked about how the control of the country’s food system and food chain can “be shifted towards smaller and more diverse production and manufacture and distributions.”

“Those are really the big questions. It would require very targeted and strong policies on the part of government. That would be everything from preferentially financing small operators [producers, manufacturers and retailers]…at every level there would have to be incentives, not just financial, but training and support also,” he says.

Pillay agrees that the increase in food prices “needs to be addressed as it directly influences what people are able to buy and eat. … Sustainable agriculture should assist in reducing the prices of locally-grown fruit and vegetables and to make them more available to South African consumers.”

Mervyn Abrahams, one of the authors of the Pacsa report, now a programme coordinator at the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group, tells IPS that the organisation is campaigning for a living wage that should be able to provide households with a basic and sufficient nutrition in their food basket. The matter, he says, is one of economic justice.

“It is precisely a justice issue because at the very least our economy should be able to provide access to sufficient and nutritious food. Because, at the basis of our whole humanity, at the very basis of our body, is our nutrition. And so it is the most basic level by which we believe that the economy should be judged, to see whether there is equity and justice in our economic arena.”

*Not her real name.

Celestina of Porcón Alto, a rural region high in the Andes, whose family has lived on the same plot of land for generations. Credit: Andrea Vale/IPS

By Andrea Vale
PORCÓN, Peru, Oct 6 2017 (IPS)

Good healthcare can be hard to get – particularly when one lives on top of a mountain. The road to Porcón in the Cajamarca region of Peru, therefore, is as breathtaking as it is sobering. With every step further into its isolated natural beauty, a group of volunteers sent to deliver healthcare essentials are reminded how long the trek would be in an emergency.

After a bus has taken the volunteers as far as it can, to the rim of a sweeping valley dipping into the basin of a ring of mountains, they start their hike.“We have a lot of fear,” Celestina says. “The doctors are always telling us that they’re going to help us and heal us, but we can’t always get to them and they’re not able to get to us."

It’s not very long mile-wise, but they stumble over unforgiving drops in a rocky wind that leads them through tilted pastures resting on the sides of the mountains. The looming brown stillness is disrupted by their panting, at a loss of breath from the gasping altitude.

At the end lies a community of artisans who live in close proximity to one another in Porcón Alto, a rural region high in the Andes.

They’ve been waiting. Once the volunteers arrive, several women filter out into the pasture where they’ve set up shop and sit cross-legged around them, all accompanied by toddlers clutching at their long skirts and babies peeking out of the tops of the shawls slung over their backs to carry infants, or vegetables.

They have a flood of questions ready, about basic nutrition, exercise, disease prevention. They have a waiting list of ailments to look at – my child has this rash. My child can’t say his R’s. It hurts when I stand up from bed.

Immediately put to work, volunteers begin taking their blood pressure, weighing them, measuring their heart rates and their blood glucose levels. Under the shadow cast by one woman’s tall brimmed hat her skin is wrinkled in layers, leathery and toughened from years of work in the sun. She looks anywhere between 40 and 60, balancing a squirming toddler in her lap while she squints at the volunteer helping her with rapt attention and concern. But a glance at her chart reveals that she is only 22.

One woman sits in the center of the others, shucking corn with a baby tied to her back. Her eyes crinkle with smile lines and her elements-exposed skin is a mosaic of black freckles and brown creases. Her name is Celestina.

Porcón is home to her in a deep sense – her family has lived on this exact plot of land for generations.

“The house over there was taken down, but that’s where my grandmother and her mother lived,” she says in Spanish, gesturing out towards a rolling plot of land.

As to what life has been like, living high up here: “Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes I get worried. My daughter is sick right now, so I’m sad right now,” Celestina says, touching her daughter’s face as the baby girl plays in her lap. Baby Analee, she says, was bit by an insect just this morning. Analee’s cheek is already massively swollen with a red welt.

Fearing for her daughter is a constant reality of existence for Celestina.

“When I’m sleeping I can forget, but otherwise there’s always that worry for my child,” she says. “She needs to go to school, she needs to work, and I’m always worried about her, to know that she’ll be okay.”

Despite how long her family has lived on this land, Celestina says without a hint of hesitation that she wishes Analee could grow up in an urban area, perhaps the city Cajamarca below.

“Of course I want to live out in the city, but we don’t have land. Where would we build a house? Here, being out in the country, we just cook, we clean, we try to bathe, and we wait. All we can do is wait for the proper transportation to get to Cajamarca to try to get the proper attention if someone is sick.”

She says that there are no home remedies that she or anyone in the community uses to try to treat illness. Their best defense is simply the best level of hygiene they can achieve, and oftentimes it isn’t enough.

According to the Pan American Health Organization, only 19.1% of the urban population in Peru make up the country’s total poverty – as compared to 54.2% of rural peoples. In regards to extreme poverty, the contrast is even starker – 2.5% of the urban population, and 23.3% of the rural.

Celestina is 38 years old. She has the health of a 60-year-old. Plagued with health struggles since childhood, she currently suffers from chronic eyesight and stomach trouble.

But she brushes this acknowledgement off and automatically returns her attention to her baby.

“My daughter is sick and I am worried,” she says. “Always, I am scared for her.”

Celestina may worry about emergency illness striking, but what her and the other community members don’t realize is that the real threat of living in such isolation is not one-time tragedies, but rather chronic health problems. Of the children screened in Porcón, one-fourth were underweight and one-fourth were either at risk of being overweight or actually overweight. Of the adults screened, 33% were obese and 42% were overweight.

Most of the people examined during the health screenings, both in Porcón and across Cajamarca, had hypertension and were overweight. An inordinate number had diabetes and were completely unaware of it, ignorant to what caused the disease. One woman’s blood glucose level was close to 230 – the volunteer who tested her was so shocked that she tested the level twice more, sure that that initial reading couldn’t be possible.

Uneducated on signs of cancer and prevention techniques, many have had parents and grandparents pass away from the disease and simply chalked it up to having ‘just died,’ without a known cause.

According to the World Health Organization, the current national Human Resources for Health Density in Peru – meaning doctors, nurses and midwives – is 17.8 per 10,000 population. That distribution, however, is extremely inequitable, with rural areas usually having an HRH density of below ten. Lima, for instance, has three times more physicians per population – 15.4 – than Huancavelica, one of the poorest cities in Peru and populated in majority by indigenous peoples. 89.1% of births in urban regions are assisted by a professional – while only 42.9% of births in rural areas are.

Consequently, it’s perhaps not surprising that child mortality rates in Peruvian rural areas are almost twice that of urban areas – 40% to 26%.  According to the Pan American Health Organization, 35.3% of adults in rural areas of Peru are overweight, and 16.5% are obese. Only 40% of them perform any “moderate physical activity” – all of the health screenings concluded with group exercise classes.

Without doctors nearby, without easy and reliable transportation to get to the closest doctors, and without health education, Celestina has to live in constant fear. There is fear for her neighbors and for herself – but above all, fear for her baby. There is fear that disease will strike, that accidents will happen, that unexplained illness will come. Because when it does, Celestina and the rest of the community are left alone on top of the Andes with only their best abilities as a defense – uneducated, unequipped and without adequate and reliable transportation.

“We have a lot of fear,” Celestina says, “The doctors are always telling us that they’re going to help us and heal us, but we can’t always get to them and they’re not able to get to us. They’re always promising that they’re going to help us, but it never happens because they’re so far.”

For now, all that Celestina and the rest of Porcón can do is wait.

“The only thing we can do is wait until we can go to the doctor,” she says, “To go to the doctor and then wait again. Sometimes there’s nobody.”

The change in the eating habits in Latin America and the Caribbean has led to an increase in overweight and obesity in the region. Credit: Eduardo Bermúdez / FAORLC

By Eve Crowley
SANTIAGO, Jan 23 2017 (IPS)

Obesity and overweight have spread like a wildfire throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, threatening the health, well-being and food and nutritional security of millions of people.

According to the new publication of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security, close to 58 percent of the inhabitants of the region are overweight (360 million people) while obesity affects 140 million people, 23 percent of the regional population.

In almost all countries of the region, overweight affects at least half the population, with the highest rates observed in the Bahamas (69 percent), Mexico (64 percent) and Chile (63 percent).

Over the last 20 years there has been a rapid increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity across the population, regardless of their economic, ethnic or place of residence, although the risk is higher in net food-importing regions and countries, which consume more ultra-processed foods.

Eve Crowley, acting regional representative of FAO for Latin American and the Caribbean. Credit: Max Valencia/FAORLC

This situation is particularly serious for women, since in more than 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the rate of female obesity is 10  percentage points higher than that of men. The impact has also been considerable in children: 3.9 million children under 5 live with overweight in our region, 2.5 million in South America, 1.1 million in Central America and 200 000 in the Caribbean.

How did we get here? According to FAO and PAHO, a key factor has been the change in the region’s eating habits.

Economic growth in recent decades, increased urbanization, higher average income and the integration of the region into international markets reduced the consumption of traditional preparations based on cereals, legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables, and increased consumption of ultra-processed products, with high amounts of sugars, salt and fats.

To curb the rise in overweight and obesity, countries in the region can draw on some of the valuable experiences they gained in their fight against hunger. Today, undernourishment affects only 5.5 percent of the regional population, while stunting in children has also dropped from 24.5 percent in 1990 to 11.3 percent in 2015, a reduction of 7.8 million children.

However, it should be noted that although hunger has declined, it has not been eradicated: there are still 34 million people unable to access the food they require for a healthy and active life, which means that the region faces a double burden of malnutrition.

According to the FAO / PAHO Panorama, combating both malnutrition and obesity requires a healthy diet that includes fresh, healthy, nutritious and sustainably produced foods. The key to progress is to promote sustainable food systems that link agriculture, food, nutrition and health.

In order to eradicate all forms of malnutrition, States should encourage the sustainable production of fresh, safe and nutritious foods as well as ensuring their diversity, supply and access, especially for the most vulnerable in regions that are net importers of foods.

These measures should be complemented with policies to strengthen family farming, short production and food marketing circuits, public procurement systems linked to healthy school feeding programs and nutritional education programs.

Fiscal measures should also be implemented to discourage the consumption of junk food, improve food labeling and warnings with regard to high sugar, fat and salt content, and regulate the advertising of unhealthy foods to reduce their consumption.

These policies are more urgent than ever in light of the current signs of stagnation in regional economic growth, which pose a significant risk to food and nutrition security.

Governments should maintain and increase their support to the most vulnerable to avoid undoing their advances in the fight against hunger and to reverse the current rise in obesity and overweight, working together through initiatives such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States’s Plan for Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication.

Although there are significant variations according to subregions and countries, Latin America and the Caribbean considered as a whole has a food availability that far surpasses the requirements of all its population, thanks to its great agricultural performance. However, in several countries, this process of agricultural development is currently unsustainable, due to the consequences it is having on the ecosystems of the region. The sustainability of food supply and its future diversity are under threat unless we change the way we do things.

The region must make more efficient and sustainable use of land and other natural resources. Countries must improve their techniques of food production, storage and processing, and put a stop to food losses and waste, as 127 million tons of food end up in the trash every year in Latin America and the Caribbean.

To meet the Sustainable Development Goals, and especially SDG2 / Zero Hunger, which aims to eradicate undernourishment by 2030, the region needs to act on the complex interactions between food security, sustainability, agriculture, nutrition and health, to build a hunger and malnutrition free Latin America and the Caribbean.

The eradication of hunger and malnutrition is not a task that can be left to the indifferent hand of the market. On the contrary, governments must exercise their will and sovereignty to develop specific public policies that attack the conditions that perpetuate hunger, overweight and obesity, as well as their consequences on the health of adults and children. Only by turning the fight against malnutrition into State policy can we put a stop to the rise of malnutrition in the region.

Excerpt:

A girl in traditional festive dress from Bolivia’s highlands region displays a basket of fruit during a fair in her school in central La Paz. Fruit is the foundation of the new school meal diet adopted in the municipality, which puts a priority on natural food produced by small local farmers in the highlands. The alliance between family farming and school feeding is extending throughout Latin America thanks to laws put into motion by the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Nov 11 2015 (IPS)

Lawmakers in Latin America are joining forces to strengthen institutional frameworks that sustain the fight against hunger in a region that, despite being dubbed “the next global breadbasket”, still has more than 34 million undernourished people.

The legislators, grouped in national fronts, “are political leaders and orient public opinion, legislate, and sustain and promote public policies for food security and the right to food,” said Ricardo Rapallo, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Food Security Officer in this region.

The members of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger also “allot budget funds, monitor, oversee and follow up on government policies,” Rapallo told IPS at FAO regional headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

A series of successful public policies based on a broad cross-cutting accord between civil society, governments and legislatures enabled Latin America and the Caribbean to teach the world a lesson by cutting in half the proportion of hungry people in the region between 1990 and 2015.“The Parliamentary Front Against Hunger is a key actor in the implementation of CELAC’s Food Security Plan, for the construction of public systems that recognise the right to food.”-- Raúl Benítez, regional director of FAO

But the 34.3 million people still hungry in this region of 605 million are in need of a greater effort, in order for Latin America to live up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is aimed at achieving zero hunger in the world.

The Sixth Forum of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger (PFH), to be held in Lima Nov. 15-17, will seek to forge ahead in the implementation of the “plan for food security, nutrition and hunger eradication in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) by 2025.”

The plan, which sets targets for 2025, is designed to strengthen institutional legal frameworks for food and nutritional security, raising the human right to food to the highest legal status, among other measures.

“The Parliamentary Front Against Hunger is a key actor in the implementation of CELAC’s Food Security Plan, for the construction of public systems that recognise the right to food,” the regional director of FAO, Raúl Benítez, told IPS.

The PFH was created in 2009 with the participation of three countries. Six years later, “there are 15 countries that have a strong national parliamentary front recognised by the national Congress of the country, which involves parliamentarians of different political stripes, all of whom are committed to the fight against hunger,” Rapallo said.

As a result, “laws on family farming have been passed, in Argentina and Peru, and in the Dominican Republic there are draft laws set to be approved. To these is added the food labeling law in Ecuador,” the expert said, to illustrate.

Bolivia sets an example

In Bolivia, the School Feeding Law in the Framework of Food Security and the Plural Economy, passed in December 2014, is at the centre of the fight against poverty in an integral fashion, Fernando Ferreira, the head of the national Parliamentary Front for Food Sovereignty and Good Living, told IPS in La Paz.

This model, which draws on the successful programme that has served school breakfasts based on natural local products in La Paz since 2000, is now being implemented in the country’s 347 municipalities.

The farmer “produces natural foods, sells part to the municipal government for distribution in school breakfasts, and sells the rest in the local community,” said Ferreira, describing the cycle that combines productive activity, employment, nutrition and family income generation.

The school breakfast programme has broad support among teachers because it boosts student performance and participation in class, Germán Silvetti, the principal of the República de Cuba primary school in the centre of La Paz, told IPS.

“They didn’t used to care, but now they demand their meals,” Silvetti said. “Some kids come to school without eating breakfast, so the meal we serve is important for their nutrition.”

In the past, students didn’t like Andean grains like quinoa. But María Inés Flores, a teacher, told IPS she managed to persuade them with an interesting anecdote: “astronauts who go to the moon eat quinoa – and if we follow their example we’ll make it to space,” she said to the children, who now eat it with enthusiasm.

Appealing to the appetites of the 145,000 students served by the school breakfast programme is a daily challenge, but one that has had satisfactory results, such as the reduction of anemia from 37 to two percent in the last 15 years, Gabriela Aro, one of the creators of the programme and the head of the municipal government’s Nutrition Unit, told IPS.

Authorities in Bolivia say the government’s “Vivir Bien” or “Good Living” programme will reduce the proportion of people in extreme poverty which, according to estimates from different national and international institutions, stands at 18 percent of the country’s 11 million people.

In the Mexican Congress, lawmakers with the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger are pushing through laws that boost food security and sovereignty, to guarantee “the right to sufficient nutritional, quality food” that was established in the constitution in 2011. Credit: Emilio Godoy/ IPS

Mexico, another case

In Mexico, a nation of 124 million people, meanwhile, poverty has grown in the last three years, revealing shortcomings in the strategies against hunger, which legislators are trying to influence, with limited results.

“Legislators must be more involved in following up on this, one of the most basic issues,” Senator Angélica de la Peña, coordinator of the Mexican chapter of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger, told IPS in Mexico City. “Even if we define budgets and programmes, they continue to be resistant to making this a priority.”

There are 55.3 million people in poverty in Mexico, according to official figures from this year, and over 27 million malnourished people.

The increase in poverty reflects the weaknesses of the National Crusade Against Hunger, the flagship initiative of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto, which targets undernourished people living in extreme poverty.

The Crusade is concentrated in 400 of Mexico’s 2,438 municipalities, involves 70 federal programmes, and hopes to reach 7.4 million hungry people – 3.7 million in urban areas and the rest in the countryside.

The Senate has not yet approved a “general law on the human right to adequate food”, which was put in motion by the Parliamentary Front and involves the implementation of a novel constitutional reform, which established in 2011 that “everyone has a right to sufficient nutritional, quality food, to be guaranteed by the state.”

The draft law will create a National Food Policy and National Food Programme, besides providing for emergency food aid.

But in spite of the limitations, Mexico’s social assistance programmes do make a difference, albeit small, for millions of people.

Since February, Blanca Pérez has received 62 dollars every two months, granted by the Pension Programme for the elderly (65 and older), which forms part of the National Crusade Against Hunger.

“It helps me buy medicines and cover other expenses. But it is a small amount for people our age – it would be better if it was every month,” this mother of seven told IPS. She lives in the town of Amecameca, 58 km southeast of Mexico City, where half of the 48,000 inhabitants live in poverty.

Pérez, who helps her daughter out in a small grocery store, is also covered by the Popular Insurance scheme, a federal government programme that provides free, universal healthcare. “These programmes are good, but they should give more support to people like me, who struggle so much,” she said.

Two urgent regional needs

Above and beyond the progress made, Rapallo said Latin America today has two urgent needs: reduce the number of hungry people in the region to zero while confronting the problem of overnutrition – another form of malnutrition.

Overweight and obesity “are a public health challenge, a hurdle to national development, and a moral requisite that we must address,” said Rapallo.

In that sense, he added, “parliamentarians are essential” to bring about public policies that contribute to good nutrition of the population and their growing demands.

“There are parliamentarians that are real leaders in their respective countries. But if all of this were not backed by a strong civil society that puts the issue firmly on the agenda, we wouldn’t be able to talk about results,” he said.

With reporting by Emilio Godoy in Mexico City and Franz Chávez in La Paz.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, May 5 2015 (IPS)

In the last half-century, people’s lifestyles have changed dramatically. Life expectancy has risen almost everywhere, but this has been accompanied by an increase of so-called non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases, and diabetes – causing more and more deaths in all corners of the world.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

My distinguished colleague Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), has called the worldwide rise of NCDs a “slow-motion catastrophe”. If NCDs were once considered the scourge of the developed world, this is no longer true; they now disproportionally affect low- and middle-income countries where nearly three-quarters of NCD deaths – 28 million per year – occur.

Much of the rise of NCDs can be attributed to unhealthy diets. WHO estimates that 2.7 million deaths every year are attributable to diets low in fruits and vegetables. Globally unhealthy diets are estimated to cause about 19 percent of gastrointestinal cancer, 31 percent of ischaemic heart disease, and 11 percent of strokes, thus making diet-related NCDs one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide.

In other words, diet determines health – just as bad diets can lead to disease, healthy diets can contribute to good health.

But what exactly is a healthy diet? This is a difficult question. Generally, a healthy diet must provide the right nutrients in the right balance and with sufficient diversity, limiting the intake of free sugars to less than 10 percent of total energy requirements, and keeping salt intake to less than 5 grams per day.“There is no one-size-fits-all healthy diet. A healthy diet must be affordable, based on locally available foodstuffs, and meet cultural preferences”

However, there is no one-size-fits-all healthy diet. A healthy diet must be affordable, based on locally available foodstuffs, and meet cultural preferences. For over 20 years, FAO, together with WHO, has worked with governments on national Food-Based Dietary Guidelines: short, science-based, tips on healthy eating, in accordance with local values, customs and tradition.

Healthy meals do not always taste or look the same. Take, for example, the Mediterranean and Japanese diets: very healthy and completely different.

The Mediterranean diet revolves around the consumption of legumes, cereals, fruits and vegetables, olive oil, fish, and moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly cheese and yogurt). It emphasises unprocessed, plant-based foods, such as fruits and vegetables, in addition to the consumption of beans, nuts, cereals and other seeds; olive oil is the main source of (unsaturated) fat.

Japanese cuisine, on the other hand, is often associated with sushi (raw fish with rice), and sashimi (fresh raw seafood). The Japanese diet emphasises at least seven ingredients: fish as a major source of protein; vegetables including daikon radish and sea vegetables; rice; soya (tofu, miso, soya sauce); noodles; fruit; and tea (preferably green).

The Japanese and Mediterranean diets are examples of healthy diets. They use a great variety of ingredients; they are rich in plant foods including vegetables and fruit, legumes and fibres; they are modest in red meat; and they utilise many natural herbs and spices instead of salt to flavour food.

Both diets are linked to peoples and cultures as much as to their natural environment: it therefore comes as no surprise that both the Mediterranean diet and the Japanese diet have made it onto UNESCO’s World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

The health benefits of the Japanese and Mediterranean diets are promising. Japanese enjoy one of the longest average life spans in the world – 87 years for women and 80 for men. In Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Spain, women have a life expectancy of 85 years. The figure for Italian men is 80 years, the same as their Japanese counterparts. All of them are above the average of high-income countries: 82 years for women and 76 years for men.

Medical research also indicate that that the Japanese diet leads to the lowest prevalence in the world of obesity – only 2.9% for Japanese women – and other chronic diseases like osteoporosis, heart ailments and some cancers. On the other hand, the Mediterranean diet, if followed for a number of years, is known to reduce the risk of developing heart disease, cancer, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

In sum, adhering to a healthy diet helps you to not only to live longer, but also to have a better quality of life. Conversely, a bad diet causes malnutrition and can expose you to a range of NCDs.

A modern paradox is that many countries – including developing countries – suffer from undernourishment on the one hand, and obesity and diet-related diseases on the other. And while FAO’s chief concern is to eradicate hunger in this world, we cannot separate food security from nutrition. FAO – together with our U.N. agencies – considers food and nutrition security a basic human right.

In all cases, the cost of malnutrition goes beyond the health of the individual: it affects society as a whole in terms of public health costs and loss of productivity, and, therefore, is an issue that must be addressed through public and coordinated action.

Last year’s Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), organised jointly by FAO and WHO, sent a clear message in that direction. The two outcome documents of ICN2, the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action that commit world leaders to establishing national policies aimed at eradicating malnutrition and making nutritious diets available to all.

A key message from ICN2 is: governments have a central role to play in creating a healthy food environment to enable people to adopt healthy dietary practices. Yes, it is consumers who choose what to eat, but it is the government’s role to provide the enabling environment that encourages and makes healthy choices possible. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Dec 10 2014 (IPS)

The vast international and national media impact of the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), held in Rome from Nov. 19 to 21, demonstrated the growing interest that nutritional problems are arousing worldwide, primarily because the media themselves are increasingly reporting issues related to poverty and exclusion.

Thousands of articles in leading newspapers from different countries of the world, numerous television reports and substantial social media activity focused on ICN2, jointly held by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), 22 years after the first international nutrition conference, also in Rome.

Global representation was ensured through participation by more than 100 ministers and deputy ministers as the leading actors responsible for nutrition-related matters in their respective countries.

Mario Lubetkin

With a policy document and a framework for action containing over 60 points, adopted by consensus and applicable at national and international levels, this conference completed one phase and launched another whose results will be seen in the years to come.

Unlike other international meetings of this nature, this time the media highlighted the interventions of keynote speakers and the final documents, but more importantly continued to publish information and thought pieces on nutrition for some weeks following the conference.

Nutrition has achieved visibility as an issue on the global news agenda, primarily because of its serious social ramifications in developing and developed countries alike.

Countless experts brought to the fore the inherent existing contradiction of having 800 million people suffering from hunger (albeit 200 million fewer than 20 years ago), while 500 million adults are suffering from obesity. The seriousness of the situation is compounded by the fact that the number of the latter is still rising and is resulting in serious health risks for the population at large.“Nutrition has achieved visibility as an issue on the global news agenda, primarily because of its serious social ramifications in developing and developed countries alike”

Suffice it to say that 42 million children are overweight, while malnutrition is the underlying cause of 45 percent of infant mortality.

Statistics indicate that unhealthy diets and lack of exercise are the cause of 10 percent of deaths and permanent disability cases.

Over two billion people, or approximately one-third of all humanity, suffer from micro-nutrient deficiencies.

The problem among children under five years of age is particularly distressing because 51 million suffer from wasting, or low weight for height, which in turn results in higher mortality from infectious diseases. Moreover, 161 million children in that particular age group also suffer from growth retardation.

Malnutrition also has high economic costs. Recent studies have indicated that malnutrition hunger, micro-nutrient deficiency and obesity result in annual costs of between 2.8 and 3.5 trillion dollars, or 4-5 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP). The per capita cost is estimated to be 400-500 dollars per year.

In his speech during the International Conference on Nutrition, Pope Francis said that “when solidarity is lacking in one country, it is felt around the world.”

Despite there being enough food for everyone, food issues are subject to manipulated information, corruption, claims regarding national security, or “teary-eyed evocations of economic crisis”, the Pontiff said. “That is the first challenge we need to overcome”, he asserted as he called for the rights of all human beings to be uppermost in all development assistance programmes.

The Pope also stressed the need to respect the environment and protect the planet. “Humans may forgive, but nature does not”, he argued, adding that “we must take care of Mother Nature, so that she does not respond with destruction”. In this way, he linked the debates on nutrition with the ongoing International Conference on Climate Change in Lima, Peru (Dec. 1-12).

However, despite the breadth of international coverage, it is noteworthy that the leading media did not fully analyse the conference’s Framework for Action, which essentially sets the course for gradual resolution of nutrition’s major challenges.

The Framework for Action proposes the enhancement of political commitments, promotion of national nutrition plans incorporating the different food security and nutrition stakeholders, an increase in responsible investment, the fostering of inter-country collaboration, whether it be North-South or South-South, and the strengthening of nutrition governance.

The Framework also recommends measures to achieve sustainable food systems, revise national policies and investments, promote crop diversification, upgrade technology, develop and adopt international guidelines on healthy diets, and encourage gradual reductions in consumption of saturated fats, sugar, salt or sodium.

The chapter on communications suggests the conduct of social marketing campaigns and lifestyle-change communication programmes promoting physical activity, dietary diversification, consumption of micronutrient-rich food products to include traditional local foods, and taking account of cultural factors.

Although the principal responsibility for implementing the Framework for Action rests with governments and parliaments, non-State actors such as civil society and the private sector have an important role to play by joining forces in ensuring that the proposals are put into action.

Throughout this process, the media have a crucial oversight role in ensuring that the challenges and proposed solutions identified by the Second International Conference on Nutrition become reality in the short and medium terms. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

These Haitian schoolchildren are being supported by a WFP school feeding programme designed to end malnutrition which, for many countries, can be a double burden where overweight and obesity exist side by side with under-nutrition. Credit: UN Photo/Albert González Farran

By Gloria Schiavi
ROME, Nov 23 2014 (IPS)

Not only do 805 million people go to bed hungry every day, with one-third of global food production (1.3 billion tons each year) being wasted, there is another scenario that reflects the nutrition paradox even more starkly: two billion people are affected by micronutrients deficiencies while 500 million individuals suffer from obesity.

The first-ever Global Nutrition Report, a peer-reviewed publication released this month, and figures from the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) highlight a multifaceted and complex phenomenon behind malnutrition.

“The double burden of malnutrition [is] a situation where overweight and obesity exist side by side with under-nutrition in the same country”, according to Anna Lartey, FAO’s Nutrition Director. “And we are seeing it in lots of the countries that are developing economically. These are the countries that are going through the nutrition transition”."The double burden of malnutrition [is] a situation where overweight and obesity exist side by side with under-nutrition in the same country. And we are seeing it in lots of the countries that are developing economically. These are the countries that are going through the nutrition transition” – Anna Lartey, FAO’s Nutrition Director

Beside hunger then, governments and development organisations have also been forced to start tackling over-nutrition.

“While under-nutrition still kills almost 1.5 million women and children every year, growing rates of overweight and obesity worldwide are driving rising diseases like cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes”, Francesco Branca, Director of Nutrition for Health and Development at the World Health Organisation (WHO), explained in a statement.

The solution does not lie in the realm of science, health or agriculture alone. It requires a cross sectorial and multi dimensional approach that includes education, women’s empowerment, market regulation, technological research and, above all, political commitment.

For this reason, representatives of governments, multilateral institutions, civil society and the private sector met in Rome for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) that took place at FAO headquarters on Nov. 19-21. Jointly organised by FAO and WHO, the conference came 22 years after its first edition and, unfortunately, addressed the same unsolved problem.

Malnutrition, in all its forms, has repercussions on the capability of people to live a full life, work, care for their children, be productive, generate a positive cycle and improve their living conditions. Figures from the Global Nutrition Report estimate that the cost of malnutrition is around four to five percent of national GDP, suggesting that prevention would be more cost-effective.

With the goal of improving nutrition through the implementation of evidence-based policies and effective international cooperation, ICN2 produced two documents to help governments and stakeholders head in the right direction: the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and a Framework for Action.

The conference also heard a strong call for accountability and for the strengthening of nutrition in the post-2015 development agenda.

Flavio Valente, who represented civil society organisations at ICN2, remarked that “the current hegemonic food system and agro-industrial production model are not only unable to respond to the existing malnutrition problems but have contributed to the creation of different forms of malnutrition and the decrease of the diversity and quality of our diets.”

This position was shared by many speakers, who stressed the negative impact that advertising of unhealthy food has, mainly on children.

According to a participant from Chile, calling obesity a non-communicable disease is misleading, because it spreads through the media system very effectively. He added that Chile currently risks being brought before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by multinational food companies for its commitment to protect public health by regulating the advertising of certain food.

This happens in a country where 60 percent of people suffer from over-nutrition and one obese person dies every hour, according to the permanent representative of Chile at FAO, Luis Fernando Ayala Gonzalez.

In an address to the conference, Queen Letizia of Spain also acknowledged the responsibility of the private sector: “It is necessary to help the economic interests converging towards public health. It is worth remembering that no country in the world has been able to reverse the epidemic of obesity in all age groups. None.”

The outcome of ICN2 brought consensus around a plan of action and some key targets.

Educating children about healthy habits and women who are in charge of feeding the family was recognised as crucial, as was breastfeeding, which should be encouraged (through paid maternity leave and breastfeeding facilities in the workplace), and the need to empower women working in agriculture.

Supporting small and family farming would also give people better opportunities to eat local, fresh and seasonal produce as well as fruit and vegetables, reducing the consumption of packaged, processed food that is often low in nutrients, vitamins and fibres and high in calories, sugar, salt and fats.

However, teaching people how to eat is not enough, if they cannot easily access quality food – hence the need for relevant policies targeting the food chain and distribution.

Initiatives like the Fruit in Schools programme proposed by New Zealand go in the right direction, especially when implemented within a coordinated policy that promotes physical activity and a healthy lifestyle that fights consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

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:

A soda-lemonade stand with soda bottles topped with lemons, in Rishikesh, India. Credit: Surya Prakash / CC-BY-SA-3.0

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 2014 (IPS)

Corporations marketing unhealthy foods to poorer consumers are being challenged for their role in the growing global burden of diseases like diabetes.

Over 340 million people are living with diabetes, and the World Health Organization predicts the number of people who die from diabetes each year will double between 2005 and 2030.  Nov. 14 is World Diabetes Day."Being poor also puts you at risk in countries like Indonesia where soda companies actually purposely market to poorer marginalised people with lower levels of education.” -- Dr. Alessandro Demaio

Dr. Alessandro Demaio, a postdoctoral fellow in global health and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) at Harvard University, told IPS that there is a clear link between poverty, diabetes and the marketing tactics used by junk food and soda companies.

“We know that globally about 80 percent of diabetes occurs in low- and middle-income countries, and we also know that in rich countries like Australia, the UK and the U.S., the worst affected populations are those who are most marginalised and impoverished,” Demaio said.

“The commonly held myth that non-communicable diseases are linked to affluence is pervasive and absolutely untrue.”

Diabetes is both a cause and consequence of poverty, Demaio said. “Diabetes care in a country like Vietnam or Malawi can cost 70 percent of a person’s income. We should remember that being poor also puts you at risk in countries like Indonesia where soda companies actually purposely market to poorer marginalised people with lower levels of education.”

Soda companies’ role in contributing to the diabetes burden is being challenged with the introduction of soda taxes in Mexico and Berkeley, California.

Dr. Vicki Alexander from Berkeley vs. Big Soda spoke to IPS about the successful campaign for Berkeley to become the first city in the United States to vote to introduce a soda tax last week.

She said that the Berkeley campaign was able to learn a lot from the successes that Mexico has had since introducing a soda tax, of one peso (eight cents) per litre in January 2014.

“Mexico City came up here [to Berkeley] to give a presentation when they got their preliminary data out,” Alexander told IPS.

Mexico City has seen a decrease in consumption of sugary beverages by 10 percent and an increase in water consumption by 13 percent, she said.

“It is such an inspiration because it is nationwide in Mexico. It shows us that yes, these taxes will have an impact,” Alexander noted. “Mexico became a model that we could discuss, the same issue in terms of the impact on diabetes and obesity.”

Demaio agrees that addressing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes should involve taxing unhealthy foods and drinks.

“We’re going to need to look at taxing things like soda, the foods that we know cause disease, we need to make them less affordable but we need to use that money to make other healthier foods more affordable.

“The soda tax in Mexico for example was a great step forward. The limitations on sizing of soda in New York that [Mayor] Michael Bloomberg tried to bring through but wasn’t able to, was again a great step forward,” Demaio said.

The Berkeley vs. Big Soda campaign deliberately involved people of colour in positions of leadership, because they are disproportionately affected by the issue, Alexander said. She said that soda companies “make decisions to market their beverages to people of colour.”

“They make huge profits off people being sick and try to confuse the public with statistics which have been completely refuted,” she said.

Diabetes and Poverty

Speaking at the United Nations in July, United Nations Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark said, “For too long NCDs were regarded as a problem for high-income countries.”

She said that this has changed as the United Nations now recognises “that developing countries are home to eighty per cent of the world’s NCD-related deaths.

“Today, low and middle-income countries are bearing the brunt of NCDs. Therefore, understanding the far-reaching development consequences of this is very important.”

Clark added that the cost of the four main NCDs, including diabetes, to lower and middle income countries is predicted to exceed seven trillion dollars between 2011 and 2025.

Demaio also told IPS that low and middle-income countries are struggling to keep up with the rapid change in the health challenges they are facing. “[High income countries] have seen the same health transition over a hundred years that some countries like Mongolia are seeing in 10 or 15 years.”

Middle income countries like China and India are among the worst affected: 13 percent of China’s population now has diabetes compared with only one percent in 1980.

“We have a situation where in many countries around the world, particularly in middle income countries, we have obese people living in the same house as people who are malnourished. This whole complex situation where we have over-nutrition and under-nutrition in the same family shows how broken our food system is globally.”

Demaio said that this is an outcome of the globalisation of the food system and the loss of food related resilience.

He says that many people have now lost the resilience that is the ability to be able to cook, to know what is in season, to be able to choose foods that make sense based on where you are geographically.

This loss of food resilience impacts not only people’s diets and health, but also has environmental and cultural consequences.

Highly processed foods that are transported long distances are more environmentally damaging than food that is local, in season, cheaper, healthier and fresher, Demaio said.

This also contributes to a loss of food culture as  “a single homogenised food culture is spreading around the world, replacing traditional diets and traditional food practices.

“We are a global community, this is a global problem, they are global companies, and these are global determinants of health. That’s the way that we need to see this challenge.” Demaio said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

By 2030, 80 percent of deaths from tobacco will be in the poorest countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Credit: Bigstock

By Laurent Huber
GENEVA, Jul 7 2014 (IPS)

Undeniably, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) helped lift specific health concerns onto the global agenda.

For example, maternal mortality, which is addressed in MDG 5, declined 45 percent from 1990 to 2013, while deaths of children under five (MDG 4) dropped from 12.4 million to 6.6 million worldwide from 1990 to 2012, (both statistics from the World Health Organisation).If trends do not change, by 2030 NCDs will be the leading global cause of disability.

Despite those impressive advances, the world is facing new development challenges. For this reason, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will replace the MDGs in 2015 must expand the list of health goals to include non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – the world’s #1 killer.

NCDs account for 60 percent (35 million) of all deaths. They include cancers, cardiovascular and lung disease, and diabetes, but they are not – as many people believe – ‘lifestyle’ diseases afflicting old people in rich countries. The largest burden – 80 percent, or 28 million deaths – occurs in low-middle-income countries (LMICs), making NCDs a major cause of poverty and an urgent development issue.

If trends do not change, by 2030 NCDs will be the leading global cause of disability. In addition, between 2011 and 2031 the diseases would have cost the world economy 30 trillion dollars, the equivalent of 98,400 dollars for every person in the United States.

Tobacco is the leading risk factor for NCDs. One hundred million people died from tobacco-related disease in the 20th century, and unless the global community acts decisively, one billion people will die in the 21st century. By 2030, 80 percent of deaths from tobacco will be in the poorest countries in Asia, Africa and South America.

In 2011, world leaders assembled for the first time at the United Nations to discuss the growing NCDs epidemic. The Political Declaration they issued concluded that the burden of NCDs “undermines social and economic development throughout the world”.

It noted that NCDs strike people in LMICs during their prime working years, and that close to half of all NCD deaths in these countries occur below the age of 70, and nearly 30 percent under age 60. As well, most NCDs deaths are preceded by long periods of ill health.

These illnesses, and early deaths of families’ main income earners, result in loss of productivity, which drags down economic growth and development.

Social determinants, such as education and income, influence people’s vulnerability to NCDs and exposure to risk factors. Individuals of lower education and economic status are increasingly exposed to NCDs risks and are disproportionately affected by them. For example, in countries such as Bangladesh, India and the Philippines, tobacco use is highest among the least educated and poorest segments of the populations.

At the same time, having an NCD may also contribute to social inequalities. The financial burden associated with these diseases increases the risk that families will be unable to send children to school and, under-educated, the risk grows that those children will live in poverty for the rest of their lives.

What can be done? There are four modifiable risk factors for the main NCDs: unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol and tobacco use. While work continues to adopt global tools to tackle the first three factors, there is consensus on how to fight the tobacco epidemic.

In 2003, the world’s governments adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the first modern-day public health treaty. It contains a number of measures that Parties commit to implement, including: smoke-free public spaces, pictorial health warnings on packages, price and tax measures to increase the price of tobacco – which discourages consumption – and complete bans on tobacco advertising.

Today the FCTC has 178 Parties, representing nearly 90 percent of the world’s population. In the battle against NCDs, “There is no other ‘best buy’ for the money on offer”, said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan in 2011.

Recognising the potential of global tobacco control, the Political Declaration of the 2011 NCD Summit:

• Urged greater efforts from countries to implement the FCTC;
• Called on countries that are not Parties to the FCTC to accede to the Convention;
• Noted the importance of tobacco taxation as a strategy at the national level;
• Recognised the irreconcilable differences between the tobacco industry and public health policy.

Building on the Declaration, in May 2013 the World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCDs, 2013-2020. It includes a target for cutting tobacco use: a 30 percent relative reduction in smoking prevalence by the year 2025.

A stand-alone goal, Attain healthy lives for all, has been proposed for the SDGs. Its sub-goals include: “By 2030 reduce substantially morbidity and mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through prevention and treatment…” and “Strengthen implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in all countries who have ratified the Convention and urge countries that have not ratified it to ratify and implement it”.

Including NCDs and the FCTC in the development goals that will be announced by the UN General Assembly in 2015 will also ensure that battling the tobacco epidemic becomes a national priority, and prevent millions of premature deaths.

Laurent Huber is Director of the Framework Convention Alliance.

Schools around the world, like this one in Melilla, Uruguay, are trying to introduce healthy eating habits to bring down rates of obesity and overweight. Credit: Victoria Rodríguez/IPS

By Farangis Abdurazokzoda
WASHINGTON , May 31 2014 (IPS)

Over two billion people – or 30 percent of the world’s population – are either obese or overweight, and no country has successfully reduced obesity rates to date, according to a new study published this week by the British medical journal, The Lancet.

The number of overweight and obese people increased from 857 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2013, according to the research, which was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Titled “Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980-2013,” the study calls obesity a “major public health epidemic” in both the developed and the developing regions of the world.

An individual is considered to be overweight if he or she has a Body Mass Index (BMI), or weight-to-height ratio, greater than or equal to 25 and lower than 30, while obesity is defined as having BMI equal to or greater than 30.

“Obesity is an issue affecting people of all ages and incomes, everywhere,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of IHME and a co-founder of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study.

Not surprisingly, the largest proportion of the world’s obese people are found in the United States (13 percent).

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Central America, and the island nations of the Pacific and the Caribbean, overweight and obesity rates have skyrocketed over the past 30 years – to 44 percent or higher.

Several oil-rich states in the MENA region – including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Libya – account for the world’s largest increase in obesity over the past generation.
But rates are also increasing the world’s two most populous nations – China and India. They currently account for 15 percent of the world’s overweight or obese population.

“These trends have nothing to do with genetics, but rather our lifestyle that has increasingly become indoors and immobile,” Ali Mokdad, who teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle, told IPS.

“We are paying the price for progress,” Mokdad, one of the study’s co-authors, added. “Machines have made our lives easier; thanks to machines, we can produce food faster and cheaper than ever, while microwaves make meals quick and easy. All these contribute to the problem.”

“It’s not a cosmetic issue, but a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality,” he said.
Particularly disturbing is the rise in obesity among children and adolescents. In the three decades covered by the study, the number of overweight or obese children and adolescents increased by 50 percent.

While in the developed world countries, 22 percent of girls and 24 percent of boys are overweight or obese, boys and girls in developing countries are catching up, as nearly 13 percent of them are overweight or obese.

“We know that there are severe downstream health effects from childhood obesity, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many cancers. We need to be thinking now about how to turn this trend around,” said the study’s lead author Marie Ng.

The study stresses the need to mobilise not only the people, but also governments in the fight against obesity and its consequences.

“It’s not only the Ministry of Health that has to be concerned, but also the Ministry of Agriculture which needs to take into account how to build programmes and develop infrastructure in a way that would encourage people to be more healthy,” according to Mokdad.

He saluted U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative “Let’s Move!” – a four-year-old effort “to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation so that kids born today will grow up healthy.” In addition to encouraging exercise among youths, “Let’s Move!” urges schools to reduce the excessive consumption of sugar, salt, and fat and include more fruits and vegetables in meals served to students.

In a column published Thursday by the New York Times, the First Lady wrote that the U.S. spends 190 billion dollars a year treating obesity-related conditions in the general population. ”Just think about what those numbers will look like in a decade or two if we don’t start solving this problem now,” she wrote.

Her efforts have drawn criticism from right-wing Republican sectors and their allies in the press. The Wall Street Journal Thursday called Obama’s efforts “cuisine central planning” and cited recent statistics showing that consumption of federally funded school lunches has declined nearly four percent since the government’s new standards were first enforced, presumably because the recommended menus no longer included items popular with young consumers.

Qatar was found to suffer the highest rates of obesity and overweight at 73.9 percent, followed by Egypt (73.6 percent), Kuwait (73.4 percent), Libya (71.9 percent), Saudi Arabia (69.4 percent), Jordan (69.3 percent), Syria (69.1 percent), Mexico (68.9 percent), Iceland (68.5 percent), and the U.S. (67.4 percent).

Among South Americans, Chileans and Paraguayans led the region, with 66.1 percent and 63.9 percent, respectively.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where obesity and overweight were least prevalent among all regions, oil-rich Equatorial Guinea was the regional leader, with 58.7 percent of the population obese or overweight. It was followed by South Africa, at 52.9 percent, and another oil-rich country, Gabon, at 47.7 percent. In Ethiopia, by contrast, only 5.5 percent of the population was obese or overweight.

South and East Asia were also relatively slim, compared to wealthier regions. Malaysia was the heavyweight at 45.3 percent, followed by South Korea (33.2 percent), Pakistan (30.7 percent), and China (28.3 percent). By contrast, less than one out of five Indians were obese or overweight (19.5) percent.

The leanest, however, included Vietnam (12.4 percent), while North Korea and Timor Leste tied for the world’s lowest prevalence at 4.6 percent, according to the study. Rates in neighbouring Australia, on the other hand, neared those of the world’s heaviest, at 63.3 percent.

Most of the countries that are heaviest today, including Libya, Egypt, Iceland, as well as many wealthy countries, were also heaviest 30 years ago. But the obesity and overweight gap between them and most developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, has since closed.

In 1980 China, for example, only about ten percent of the population was overweight or obese – or about one-third of the percentage in 2012.

More country data can be found here.

Jim Lobe contributed to this article.

Mexico is fighting obesity and accompanying diseases with a one-peso per litre tax on sugar-sweetened beverages that kicked in Jan. 1. France implemented its “cola tax” in 2012. Several U.S. states tax sugar-sweetened beverages, including Vermont, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia. Illinois legislators are considering such a tax.

To date, no U.S. city has approved a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. Advocates of the tax in San Francisco and Berkeley, California hope they will be the first. But they’ll have to fight the “big soda” industry lobby to do it."We don’t want to start a precedent - every time a corporation threatens to put a bunch of money in, we back down.” -- San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener

Proponents say the taxes would reduce consumption of drinks that contribute to costly diseases like diabetes. But the American Beverage Association, representing the 141-billion-dollar non-alcoholic drink industry, says the tax would hurt the poor by inflating grocery bills, and argues that the choice to drink sugary beverages should be made by the individual, not the government.

Berkeley and San Francisco residents will vote Nov. 4 on whether to tax sugary drinks.

Dr. Vicki Alexander, MPH, co-chairs the Berkeley Healthy Child Initiative Coalition, the tax measure sponsor in Berkeley. She said sweetened beverages can be even more harmful than cake or cookies.

“When [a sugar-sweetened drink] enters your mouth, it is quickly swallowed and enters the organ that regulates sugar in the bloodstream,” Alexander said at a recent council meeting. “You don’t even have time to feel full. So you drink more – you supersize it. This high sugar content can lead straight to diabetes.”

The ABA spent millions of dollars opposing sweetened-drink tax campaigns in Richmond and El Monte, California, soundly defeating both in 2012.

But Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore said the powerful industry doesn’t scare him. “We were the first community to divest [from South Africa], the first community to have domestic partner benefits, the first to put curb cuts for our disabled community,” he said at a recent city council meeting. “No city has been able to successfully pass a sugar-sweetened beverage tax, but it will happen here in Berkeley.”

Across the Bay, San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener is sponsoring San Francisco’s ballot measure to tax sugar-sweetened beverages. Like Moore, he said he’s ready to take on big soda.

“The beverage industry is a bad actor,” Wiener said. “They are going to put a lot of money into the campaign, just like tobacco and big oil put a lot of money in any time we try to do anything in California around taxes or regulations. We don’t want to start a precedent – every time a corporation threatens to put a bunch of money in, we back down.”

Tax measure details won’t be finalised until July. In its present form, the San Francisco measure would tax sugar-sweetened beverages at two cents per ounce; Berkeley’s levy would be one cent per ounce. Sodas, sports drinks, and sugar-sweetened teas would be taxed; the tax wouldn’t include milk and medical drinks, diet sodas and alcohol.

Distributors would pay the tax, which proponents believe would be passed on to consumers. Adding a penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages across the U.S. would prevent 240,000 cases of diabetes per year, according to Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, associate professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco.

The San Francisco measure directs tax funds to nutrition, health and physical activity programmes. The Berkeley coalition is evaluating polling data to decide whether its measure will specify where funds are spent.

Advertising by the sweetened beverage industry often targets children. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

Retired cardiologist and former Richmond Councilmember Dr. Jeff Ritterman, who spearheaded failed efforts to pass the tax in Richmond, is advising proponents in San Francisco and Berkeley.

“Being first out of the gate, we didn’t have money,” Ritterman told IPS. “We didn’t have professionals running the campaign. And we didn’t have polling data. A cardiologist turned city councilmember flying by the seat of his pants is what we had in Richmond.”

The beverage industry spent 2.5 million dollars in Richmond, a city of about 100,000, and 1.5 million dollars in El Monte, with about 20,000 people, to defeat the measures. (Berkeley’s population is about 112,000 and San Francisco’s is about 825,000.)

With seven months before the election, tax proponents in Berkeley and San Francisco have instituted many elements the Richmond campaign lacked. They’ve tapped volunteers, raised funds, hired professional consultants, taken polls and launched websites.

The beverage industry also got an early start. It established the Coalition for an Affordable City, which sent mailers to San Francisco voters targeting the city’s “rising cost of living, escalating rents, [and] impending evictions,” arguing that instead of addressing housing costs, tax proponents want to make life harder by taxing sodas.

Supervisor Wiener said the mailer used “the very real anxiety around the cost of housing” to attack the tax. “To suggest that a two-penny per ounce tax on soda is even in the same universe as seniors who are losing their housing is pretty specious,” he said.

IPS asked the ABA for comment; they responded by directing this reporter to their websites.

An overarching question is how the Berkeley and San Francisco campaigns will compete, given that, no matter how much money they raise, the industry will outspend them.

San Francisco campaign consultant Maureen Erwin said they’ll depend, in part, on “enthusiastic” volunteers. “Person to person contact is absolutely the best method of getting the message out,” she said.

In Richmond, the beverage industry split the community along racial lines, garnering opposition to the tax from minority city council members and communities by claiming the tax was regressive and would hurt poor Latino and Black communities.

Dr. Alexander, who is African American, told IPS that although seven of the 15 members of the Berkeley coalition steering committee are people of colour, and the initiative is endorsed by the local NAACP and prominent Latino organisations, there is still need for vigilance.

“If they offer a [Black] minister 5,000 dollars for a church garden, would he accept it?” Alexander asked. “We’re prepared for attempts to divide the community.”

Another argument the beverage industry used effectively in Richmond, and the Coalition for an Affordable City is using in San Francisco, addresses the issue of personal responsibility.

“When it comes to our food and beverage choices and the choices we make for our families, we don’t need the city government’s input,” the Affordable City SF website says. “It should be up to parents to make responsible choices for their children. A beverage tax is no substitute for parental responsibility.”

But Sara Soka, consultant to the Berkeley pro-tax coalition, told IPS that while people have nominal choice about what they drink, “pervasive marketing from the beverage industry has made having a real choice a lot harder for all of us, especially kids and their parents.”

The beverage industry ads target children – especially children of colour, she said, adding, “About two-thirds of California teens drink one or more sweet drinks each day. And cheap drinks don’t help. A sugary drink tax is one way we can fund programmes that raise awareness for kids and parents.”

Berkeley Councilmember Laurie Capitelli cautioned it won’t be easy to fight the industry. “They’ll try to divide us by race, they’ll try to divide us by class, they’ll accuse Berkeley of trying to be a ‘nanny state,’” he said.

But Ritterman said understanding the tactics and messages big soda used in Richmond and El Monte, the Berkeley and San Francisco campaigns will “inoculate the public to what’s coming and take the power out of the beverage industry message.”

By Joan Erakit
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 8 2013 (IPS)

Over 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010. In fact, since 1980, the worldwide prevalence of obesity has doubled, according to the British medical journal the Lancet.

Danielle Nierenberg

Food Tank co-founders Danielle Nierenberg and Ellen Gustafason see deep systemic problems with our food system that go beyond simple shortages or overindulgence.

From poverty to unemployment, women’s empowerment to education, Food Tank believes that solutions are most readily available when communities have basic information on the best practices to address local agricultural, environmental and social problems.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: At Food Tank, you guys bring up an interesting disparity that our generation faces these days: some people not having enough food while others eat too much. What do you see happening?

A: It’s ironic. We produce more food than ever before, but the world still has nearly one billion people – or one out of every seven – who go to bed hungry each night. In addition, there are another 1.5 billion people that are overweight or obese. These might seem like opposite problems, but they’re part of the same problem – a food system that doesn’t nourish people. We have been using calories and yields as our only measurements.

Most of the research and investment in agriculture is focused on starchy staple crops, instead of crops that are nutrient dense, or protect water supplies, or enhance soils, or promote gender equity, or empower youth.

Q: Do you see African nations embracing sustainable solutions in regards to combating hunger? Are there ways in which local communities can start on a smaller scale in implementing solutions?

A: African farmers are more than just farmers – they’re businesswomen and businessmen, they’re entrepreneurs, and they’re stewards of the land who deserve to be recognised for the ecosystem services they provide that at have widespread, global benefits.

African farmers and communities are implementing solutions, including rainwater harvesting, solar drip irrigation, planting preventing post harvest losses, planting indigenous crops, etc. that are helping improve nutrition, increase incomes, and protect the environment.

But farmers need more investment, research, and investment. African governments, however, need to start investing in farmers. Since the 1980s, agriculture’s share of global development aid has dropped from over 16 percent to a meager four percent. And only a handful of African nations allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture as part of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, or CAADP.

Q: How do you suggest reaching out to women about global food issues?

A: Women make up to 80 percent of the agricultural labour force in sub-Saharan Africa, but they don’t have the same access to credit, land, and extension services. In places like Zambia, traveling theatre groups are using plays to show communities the important role that women play in farming.

Q: What can you tell us about the environment and its relationship to global food issues?

A: Water scarcity is increasing, soil fertility is decreasing, and climate change is the likely culprit in more extreme weather events, like the devastating drought that hit the United States last year and the disastrous floods that killed or displaced millions of farmers in Pakistan in 2010 or the drought that is taking place in the Sahel now.

Food production is dependent on predictable rainfall, nutrient rich soils, and predictable weather. Although agriculture contributes about 30 percent of all greenhouse gases, it is also the human endeavor most dependent on a stable climate.

Excerpt:

Promoting friendship and outdoor games for children is part of Elige Vivir Sano's programme to combat obesity. Credit: Elige Vivir Sano

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

The prevalence of obesity and hypertension among the poor in Chile is a factor that aggravates inequality, requiring public policies for prevention and mitigation of the high cost of a healthy diet.

The most recent national health survey, carried out in 2012, found that 8.9 million people in Chile are overweight or obese, equivalent to 67 percent of the population.

The figures indicate that there are 2.1 million more obese people now than in 2003, when the previous survey was done. Morbid or extreme obesity has increased by more than 100 percent and now affects 300,000 people.

Broken down by socioeconomic level, 35.5 percent of the poorest, least educated segment of the population is overweight, compared to 24.7 percent of the middle-income segment and 18.5 percent of the highest.

Chile’s statistics are in line with the results of a 2012 study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which found that the prevalence of obesity worldwide nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008.

Latin America leads that increase. Mexico has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. And in South America, Chile has the third highest obesity rate, after Argentina and Venezuela. It is also the country with the highest proportion of men with hypertension or high blood pressure in South America.

Juan Carlos Prieto, a cardiologist at the Clinical Hospital of the University of Chile, said the figures are not new and reflect complex aspects of social inequality.

“Chile also has record carbohydrate consumption, especially of refined flours, like bread,” he told IPS.

“If you make a quick survey, especially among low-income people, you find the staple food is bread: a person can eat up to six to eight servings a day, which means consuming the same number of grams of salt a day,” he said.

In his view, that is the nub of the problem. “A salty diet, plus obesity derived from over-consuming carbohydrates with the calories they imply, explains the environmental factor of the level of hypertension in Chile,” he said.

Prieto, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Chile School of Medicine, said the prevalence of hypertension and obesity is higher among people with low incomes, “and there is quite a significant difference” between this group and other sectors of the population.

The problem, he said, is that the prices of fruit and vegetables, essential elements of a healthy diet, have soared in Chile in the past 10 years.

For instance, a kilo of apples used to cost 20 cents of a dollar in street markets, and now costs 1.50 dollars. In supermarkets, the price is even higher.

As a result, Chileans are eating on average 86 kilos of bread a year, an amount that is worrying the experts.

“People on low incomes resort to the cheapest foods, like pasta or bread, which fill them up quickly and do not cost very much,” Prieto said.

This, together with sedentary habits and high levels of stress in society, led the government of President Sebastián Piñera to implement the Elige Vivir Sano (Choose Healthy Living) programme, aimed at changing dietary habits and fomenting the practice of sports among Chileans.

When Piñera took office in March 2010, “over 88 percent of the population did less than 20 minutes exercise three times a week,” the director of the government initiative, Pauline Kantor, told IPS.

She added that this is a social problem, as it affects mainly the most disadvantaged sectors.

“Chile is a sick country, and if we do not take care now, in another 10 years we will be in deep trouble when it comes to heart disease and diabetes, and we will have health costs that will be difficult to sustain,” she said.

Elige Vivir Sano, headed by Piñera’s wife, Cecilia Morel, is one of a number of public policies being taken forward jointly by several organisations.

For example, the Education Ministry decided to increase the time allotted to physical education in schools, from two to four hours a week, while the Health Ministry extended the traditional children’s programme of health control to teenagers, so that overweight adolescents are referred to nutritionists for treatment.

Another novelty is the installation of exercise equipment in public squares, now called “active plazas.” These have been set up in 172 out of the 346 municipalities in the country.

“We are not asking people to join a programme at a gym, but only to learn some exercise routines so they can work out at home or in nearby squares,” Kantor said. The campaign includes radio and television advertising that invites homemakers to exercise using one-kilo packages of rice or beans as weights, to get people to adopt a home exercise routine.

Kantor said that while it would take 10 years to see real change, some progress has already been made. “The last survey of physical activity and sports found that 500,000 Chileans are no longer sedentary, an important achievement,” she said.

Also, “40 percent of the people who contacted Elige Vivir Sano said they had changed at least one habit,” she said.

Now the goal is to turn the programme into law. The draft bill, which will be presented to Congress soon, includes the creation of an executive secretariat, under the Ministry of Social Development, that will coordinate programmes from different ministries. The aim of the bill is “to give the changing of habits the priority that Chile needs,” said Kantor.

In the view of Prieto, the cardiologist, the initiative is “interesting,” but the main thing is to create concrete possibilities for bringing about change.

“When it comes to diet, I repeat, people are urged to eat five fruits a day, but you have to look at the cost of that compared to a plate of pasta, for a family living on the minimum wage,” which in Chile is only 400 dollars a month.

“It has to be evaluated whether this depends only on individuals, or whether the state has to take action to make this happen, for instance by increasing access by the lowest-income sectors,” he said.

Sreelakshmi, an office executive in a major diagnostic laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of the southern Indian state of Kerala, ends her 11-hour working day to return home at night to a mountain of domestic chores.

At 35, she is already diabetic and vulnerable to disorders ranging from obesity and depression to hypertension and chronic backache.

Health experts warn that Sreelakshmi represents an increasing number of high-powered Indian working women who juggle workplace and domestic responsibilities in an effort to keep everyone around them happy, while disregarding the toll this hectic lifestyle takes on their minds and bodies.

For ambitious, middle-class women such as Sreelakshmi, hailing from a suburban area of Thiruvananthapuram, the office and the home are equally important: they cannot afford to choose one over the other. The result is a harmful mix of stress, anxiety and exhaustion.

Dr. Manjula, a senior medical scientist at the government health institute in Thiruvananthapuram, told IPS that many working women are suffering from “lifestyle diseases”.

A survey conducted by the Mumbai-based Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) in 2009 revealed that 68 percent of working women suffer from lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes and depression.

Elaborating on the health challenges facing Indian working women, Dr. Mohan Rao, a professor at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at the Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, told IPS that hunger, anaemia and infectious diseases remain the major epidemiological priorities for working women in India, the majority of whom are in the unorganised sector, working for low wages.

“The working woman struggles between the responsibilities of production and reproduction. They often sacrifice their own health for the health of the family,” he said. “We need to improve the public health system so that women have access to (a range of) healthcare facilities, and not merely reproductive health services. But we also need to improve working conditions, wages (and) provide access to the universal public distribution systems,” he added.

A survey entitled ‘Rising Workplace Obesity Among Indian Women’, conducted by Healthji.com in association with Leisa’s Secret, a firm that sells weight-loss products, revealed that about 80 percent of urban working women in the 25-45 age group are experiencing weight gains as a result of a sedentary lifestyle.

“Most women (say) they lack the time to walk or exercise due to work pressure,” according to Heal Foundation President R. Shankar.

Dr. Sreelekha Nair, researcher at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi, told IPS that the health problems arising from a sedentary life style have reached pandemic levels, with far-reaching economic, environmental and social consequences.

Depression is another major challenge for working women.

Psychiatrists say the inability to perform as well as expected in the workplace, non-achievement of targets, missing deadlines and constant worry about shirking family responsibilities could lead to clinical depression.

Dr. Roy Kuruvila, a well-known psychiatrist in Chennai, told IPS that stressful working environments affect women more than men, as the former have fewer outlets for venting their anxiety or frustration.

“Social support and encouragement are needed to decrease the tensions of working women,” he added.

The problem reaches deep into family life, impacting parenting as well. A five-member study team, led by Dr. M.K.C. Nair, director of the Child Development Centre in the Government Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram, found that there was less breastfeeding among working mothers than non-working mothers.

“An exclusive breastfeeding rate of 54.28 percent was reported among non-working mothers and a much lower rate, 29.52 percent, among working mothers.” Over 77 percent of “working women quoted lack of maternity leave beyond three months as the major impediment to exclusive breast feeding”, the study found.

Doctors practicing the Indian Systems of Medicine opine that most working women avoid routine check-ups due to time constraints. They advise women to keep a careful watch for endometriosis, breast cancer, cervical spondylosis, insomnia, hypothyroidism and hair loss.

Dr. V.S. Ambal, a physician at the Santhigiri Health Care Research Centre at Pothencode in Thiruvananthapuram, said that excess work also leads to menstrual disorders and other gynaecological problems.

“Ayurveda disallows disparate food combinations, which damage internal organs, and advises the intake of natural food. There has been a major shift in the food habits of working women in cities, who prefer to have fast and packaged food due to work pressure, standard of living and convenience,” she told IPS.

Studies and surveys suggest that consumption of fast foods, which contain a high percentage of salt, sugar and preservatives, is on the rise.

An ASSOCHAM survey conducted this year revealed that 67 percent of working women admitted to switching away from traditional food items that are nutritious, simple and easy to digest to fast foods loaded with empty calories.

(END)

Pediatricians and nutritionists stress that there is no single factor explaining why Argentina is the country in Latin America with the highest rate of obese and overweight children.

“In Argentina, between 2.5 and 3.0 percent of preschoolers were obese in the 1980s, compared to 10 percent today,” Dr. Esteban Carmuega, with the Centre of Studies on Child Nutrition (CESNI), told IPS. “We lead the statistics in the region.”

The average for South America is 6.8 percent, Carmuega said.

But he added that the rise in obesity is a regionwide problem.

Neighbouring Chile and Uruguay have rates only slightly lower than Argentina’s. “It’s difficult to come up with an answer. I believe that there is a multiplicity of factors here, rather than just one killer,” he said.

Dr. Miriam Tonietti, secretary of the nutrition committee of the Argentine Society of Pediatrics, concurred. In a conversation with IPS, she pointed to the serious risks associated with obesity in children.

“We are seeing that young children are also suffering from serious diseases related to obesity, such as hypertension, changes in the levels of blood lipids, and altered glucose metabolism, which precedes diabetes,” she noted.

“We didn’t see these symptoms at such a young age in the past,” said Tonietti, a paediatrician at the Dr. Ricardo Gutiérrez Children’s Hospital in Buenos Aires. “The prognosis is complicated, and the life expectancy of these children is very poor.”

The worst complications, she said, are type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But there are a number of other problems associated with excess weight in childhood, including traumatological and psychological issues, she added.

Like Carmuega, Tonietti does not attribute obesity to one single cause. “Obesity is a multifactorial phenomenon, conditioned by genetics,” she explained.

She said, however, that what stands out in Latin America is the “nutritional transition.” As part of that transition, she mentioned the process of rural-urban migration by people seeking better employment opportunities.

“People are uprooted, they lose their culture and their diet, and foods rich in fats and sugar become prevalent,” she summed up.

The experts said that foods rich in nutrients are more expensive, which also increases the risk of obesity among the poor. And they also point out that obesity is not the opposite of malnutrition, but part of the same problem.

“For a long time, we were concerned about accelerating the growth rates of children, and we gave them more food as soon as we noticed they were going down in weight. What we are seeing now can also be a consequence of that,” said Carmuega.

The sources pointed out that acute child malnutrition rates are declining overall in the region, with the phenomenon restricted to pockets of poverty. But the problem of poor nutrition associated with obesity is growing, and “poses greater risks,” Tonietti said.

She said that in the public hospital where she works, she often sees that families “do not even notice” that their child is overweight, as if it were just a natural part of life.

“One example: two obese parents come in with a child who is heavily overweight, and they say they are there because they were ‘sent by the traumatologist’. And when they are asked if there is a family history of obesity, they say no.”

Tonietti said this indicates that the capacity to identify the problem is being lost, which creates delays in coming up with solutions.

The probability that an overweight preschooler will become an overweight adult is 25 percent. In the case of schoolchildren, the likelihood rises to 50 percent, and for adolescents, the risk climbs to 80 percent, experts say.

At a conference on childhood obesity held this month in Buenos Aires,
Carmuega called his colleagues’ attention to the need for early intervention.

At the conference, organised by CESNI and the Argentine Society of Obesity and Eating Disorders, Carmuega concluded that “the only way to treat this problem is by trying to prevent it from happening.”

He recommended working to prevent women of child-bearing age from becoming overweight, and helping them to control their diet during pregnancy. He also said breastfeeding is “perhaps the only vaccine” that protects children against obesity.

“We have to try to start earlier, working with women, through a strong intervention during the critical first 1,000 days of growth of the child,” he said.

Carmuega said Argentina had made “a major stride forward” when the centre-left government of Cristina Fernández adopted the universal child benefit, a cash transfer that covers the children – up to the age of 18 – of unemployed parents and informal sector workers, rural workers and domestics with incomes below the minimum monthly wage.

But he also said it was necessary to “adapt all health policies” to the obesity seen in doctors’ offices, in order to urge families, doctors and schools to create “healthier environments” for children to grow up in.

Olympic torch arriving at Tretherras School, Newquayon. Credit: Bobchin1941/CC by 2.0

By Isabelle de Grave and Stephanie Parker
NEW YORK, Jul 21 2012 (IPS)

As the 2012 London Olympics gears up to open on Jul. 27, criticism of the longstanding partnership between the Games and sponsor McDonald’s has stolen a small portion of the limelight.

It’s not only civil society activists protesting the fast food giant this year, but local politicians.

“London won the right to host the 2012 Games with the promise to deliver a legacy of more active, healthier children across the world,” the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, who recently proposed a motion to exclude McDonald’s, Coca-Coca-Cola and others from the Games, told the 25-member Labour-dominated London Assembly.

”Yet the same International Olympic Committee that awarded the games to London persists in maintaining sponsorship deals with the purveyors of high-calorie junk that contributes to the threat of an obesity epidemic.”

The McDonald’s marketing strategy means that investment in sporting education goes hand in hand with the sale of low-priced, high-calorie fast food. In the UK, the company is offering up to 117,000 dollars to local football clubs.

“McDonald’s anticipated the criticism around its junk food 30 to 40 years ago. It spent those decades building a structure and good will to deflect criticism about the health impact of its products,” Sara Deon of Corporate Accountability International told IPS, highlighting McDonald’s sponsorship of the Games as a clear example of this.

McDonald’s has been an official sponsor of the Olympics since 1976. The company recently had its contract extended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to 2020.

Coca-Cola has also been a partner of the games since 1926. According to Benjamin Seeley of the International Olympic Committee, the company “sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education programmes in more than 100 countries”.

The Olympics rely on such commercial partnerships for more than 40 percent of revenues, and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are two of the leading contributors.

McDonald’s did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the quality of its food in relation to the dietary needs of adults and children, and criticism of its Olympics sponsorship.

However, physicians and nutrition advocates have also expressed concern over both companies as official sponsors, particularly in the context of rising obesity in the UK.

There have been plans to boycott McDonald’s sponsorship of the games by civil society campaigners who deem it unworthy of inheriting the prestige of the Olympics as a supplier of fat, sugar and manipulative marketing initiatives.

Ceci Charles-King, an advocate for food justice, told IPS, “I worry about the message (sponsorship) sends to children and adults. McDonald’s is hydrogen, salt and empty calories. Coca-Cola is sugar, fructose corn syrup and empty calories.”

The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges recently declared that sponsorship by the fast food giant sends the wrong message to people in the UK, which has the most overweight population in Europe with 22 percent of Britons now considered obese.

When a customer goes to the U.S. McDonald’s website to look at the nutritional value associated with “happy meals” for kids, it only shows the calorie, fat and protein intake. The webpage omits saturated fat, salt, vitamin and sugar content and the user must navigate to another section to find the information.

“The food continues to be high in sugar, fat and salt…the so-called healthier options do little for people that are seeking truly healthy options,” Deon told IPS.

Selecting an example from the menu, she said that, “The fruit and maple porridge contains more grammes of sugar than a snickers (candy bar).”

“They are little more than a vehicle to sell its bread and butter products: burgers, chips and fizzy drinks,” she added.

According to Deon, McDonald’s’ investment in programmes to promote physical activity “fall well short of the meaningful change that we need to address the epidemic of diet-related disease and McDonald’s needs to address the core issue of ending its marketing to kids.”

The McDonald’s Olympic restaurant, located in the Athlete’s Village, is the largest in the world, seating up to 1,500 people. It is expected to serve around 14,000 people a day during the Games, and will be offering free Olympic-themed happy meal toys to children.

Asked how children might avoid junk food buoyed by the positive image of the Olympics, Charles-King said it may be as simple as “(showing) the child how to cook so they can make better food choices”.

As far as athletes are concerned, Jill McDonald, UK chief executive of McDonald’s, has commented on the busy location of the restaurant in the Athlete Village, stating that athletes know more than anyone what they should be eating.

Benjamin Seeley told IPS that, “The IOC only enters into partnerships with organisations that work in accordance with the values of the Olympic movement.”

In June, the London Assembly has passed a motion calling for stricter criteria to assess suitable Olympic sponsors. New rules would exclude high-calorie food and beverage producers from sponsorship roles, ending the age-old relationship between McDonald’s and the Olympics.

This year is not the first time that Olympic sponsors have come under scrutiny. In 2008, human rights activists called for a boycott to end sponsorship of McDonald’s and other restaurants.

Food retailers are not the only sponsors to face opposition this year. Indian athletes and officials will be skipping the opening and closing ceremonies to protest Dow Chemical’s involvement with the Games. Dow is the owner of Union Carbide, whose 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India killed more than 22,000 people and polluted soil and water sources for years to come.