MALNUTRITION: Kenya: food insecurity and malnutrition

GILBERT arap BOR: May 22 2011


One of the paradoxes of food security is that an obese person also can be malnourished.
We often associate food insecurity with a lack of calories. This is its classic and most obvious form. In extreme cases, a lack of calories can mean severe hunger or even starvation.
Yet sometimes people get plenty of calories but not enough nutrients. This is a less obvious form of food insecurity.
Some call it “hidden hunger” and it poses incredible challenges. Malnutrition stunts growth, hurts cognitive development in children, and darkens futures. Fortunately, technological advances in agriculture provide a solution.
The fundamental challenge of malnutrition is that people do not always want to buy and eat the food that is best for them.
Their first and last impulse is to want food that is cheap, tasty, and easily available. Nutrition has little or nothing to do with the choices people make when they shop.
This is especially true in developing countries, where money and access to food are limited. Here in Kenya, I see the problem of malnutrition regularly.
Fruit should be a part of everyone’s diet. But people skip it all the time, especially when it is out of season and perceived as being expensive.
The problem is most severe in urban slums and many rural districts of the country, such as Samburu and Turkana, and the North Eastern districts.
Around the world, malnutrition may affect as many as two billion people. It has almost certainly grown worse because of the global spike in food prices.
The Economist recently described the bad diet of the poor as “one of the world’s neglected scourges.” Everybody needs a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, but several types are commonly in short supply.
Iron is necessary for a functional immune system, but more than half the women in India and 40 per cent of those in Indonesia do not consume enough of the mineral.

Zinc contributes to the proper functioning of the brain and an estimated 400,000 people die each year because they do not take in the minimal amount required.
Vitamin A helps the body to protect its organs, but half-a-million children go blind each year because they lack this simple ingredient in their diets.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 43 million children under the age of five are at constant risk. The world must grow more food simply to feed itself. It also must grow better food so that people can thrive.
Farmers in Kenya and Uganda have responded by raising orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, whose rich nutrients rapidly improve the health of women and children.
Farmers would like to have access to the best technologies to fight malnutrition. Widespread approval of golden rice, a biotech crop, would combat vitamin A deficiencies.
So would the advent of biofortified cassava, turning a staple food crop for 250 million sub-Saharan Africans into an arsenal of carotenoids that boost vitamin A intake.
If researchers can find a way to change the colour of vitamin A-enriched maize from yellow to white, farmers would find a strong market for it.
Professors at Iowa State University recently used biotechnology to increase the protein content of soybeans. These are the sort of advances we hope can be achieved in Kenya.

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/We+all+need+to+play+our+role+in+fight+against+food+insecurity/-/440808/1167422/-/3it47h/-/

MALNUTRITION: World experts meet to find solutions to malnutrition

 22 Mar 2011
Pretoria - More than 60 world nutrition experts are currently meeting at the World Health Organisation (WHO) headquarters in Geneva this week to revise guidelines and identify solutions to tackle the growing problem of malnutrition.
According to WHO, malnutrition, including under-nutrition and obesity, accounts for 11 percent of all diseases and long-term poor health and disability, and leads to stunted growth and wasting in nearly 300 million children.
The organisation revealed that four million children die each year from nutritional risks including being underweight, vitamin and mineral deficiency, particularly vitamin A, iron, iodine and zinc.
WHO's Director of Nutrition for Health and Development, Francesco Branca, said while lack of food can lead to serious health problems, too much food can have the same affect, pointing out that 43 million children under the age of five are overweight.
"We are seeing that often we have in the same countries, at the same time, the presence of under-nutrition and overweight. We are seeing that this increase in overweight figures is becoming a problem in developing countries.
"We have the greatest increase in overweight figures in Africa, particularly North Africa and we now can say that perhaps the proportion of the number of children who are overweight is actually larger in developing countries than in developed countries," said Branca.
The WHO also reported that about one-third of the 1.5 billion overweight people in the world are obese. Approximately 35 million of the 43 million overweight children are in developing countries, with the largest numbers in Asia. The fastest overweight growth rates are in Africa.
"Today's children are becoming overweight because they are more sedentary than in the past. Simply put, they are eating more than they need. The highly refined, processed high-energy density food available in rich countries also is widely available in poor countries and these foods are high in sugar and fat content," said WHO.
Professor of nutrition at Cornell University, Rebecca Stoltzfus, said the overweight and obesity epidemics were now present in every country in the world, noting that the conditions of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, being overweight and obese are related in multiple ways.
"The kinds of diets that lead children to become overweight - the high sugar, high fat diets - tend to be relatively low in essential vitamins and minerals. There is evidence emerging that the condition of overweight or obesity also changes one's metabolism of key minerals, such as iron, so that obese individuals do not absorb and metabolise iron normally," said Stoltzfus.
She also noted that being underweight in women and children is responsible for more premature deaths and disability than any other preventable risk factor - more than unsafe sex, use of tobacco and being overweight.
Child obesity can also lead to serious health consequences, including the early onset of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and certain cancers.
http://www.buanews.gov.za/news/11/11032211251001

MALNUTRITION: Malnutrition Plagues Guatemala's Children

BY TALEA MILLER: Feb. 16, 2011 Guatemala has the highest rate of chronic malnutrition among children in Latin America, and the health consequences continue on through adulthood.


Children ages 3 and 4 in Guatemala; Photo by Talea Miller


Kayla is months away from her fifth birthday and weighs just 18 pounds, about half what a girl her age should by World Health Organization standards.
She suffers from chronic malnutrition and can barely move. Even breathing appears difficult. During a recent visit to Hospitalito Atitlan in rural Guatemala, she was cradled in her mother's arms and whisked from examination room to examination room.
 Kayla's brain development is not progressing, her physical development is stunted,and she can't do simple tasks for herself, said her physical therapist Andrea Maria Sojuel.
Sojuel works for a small non-profit called ADISA, serving disabled patients in the indigenous community of Santiago Atitlan. She sees quite a few children with the same condition. Another patient of hers, a 20-month-old, weighs just eight pounds.



Kayla with her mother at Hospitalito Atitlan.
About 49 percent of children in Guatemala are chronically malnourished according to the World Food Program—the fourth highest ratein the world. In indigenous communities the rate is closer to 70 percent.
While most won't manifest symptoms as grave as Kayla's, they will all suffer health consequences because of the condition. Chronic malnutrition causes stunted growth, the most obvious and widespread indicator in Guatemala, but also increases the chances of children developing heart disease, diabetes and kidney damage down the line. It can cause anemia as well, greatly increasing the risk of a woman dying in child birth.
Infections that cause diarrhea play a big roll in malnutrition of infants, but for many families the root problem comes down to numbers—too many mouths to feed, not enough food.
"Sometimes it's a question of too many children. The boys will sometimes preferentially get food over the girls, I have seen that," said Mark Lepore, a visiting physician working at the hospital.
Asuncion Don Diego, from Alotenango, near Antigua, knows just how difficult these choices can be. She and her husband have seven children. He plants corn for a living, she took a job washing clothes to help pay for food.
"We would at least try to have tortillas, even if that is all we could feed them," she said through an interpreter.
Jose Andres Botran , who helped create an office in the Guatemalan government specifically to address the problem of food security, said a lack of education on what foods are important for children is part of the problem.
"A person can have 12 tortillas and a Coke and will not be hungry but they won't be well nourished," he said.
Awareness about malnutrition has grown, but necessary monitoring has not been put in place to see if the situation is improving, Botran said. The food security office has helped connect stake holders and runs initiatives to provide fortified foods and educate the population.
USAID also contributes between $16 to $18 million a year in food assistance to the country, including some higher protein commodities like beans and grains fortified with soy.
Still, says Chessa Lutter, regional advisor for the Pan American Health Organization, Guatemala continues to have some of the poorest nutrition indicators in the region and once a child has been malnourished through crucial early development, it has long-lasting implications.
PAHO reports that Guatemala has the highest rates of obesity among poor countries in Latin America, linked to malnutrition. Once a person is stunted and below-average height, it is much easier for them to become overweight.
"The same type of diet, that is heavy in carbs and cheap fats, which makes kids short and anemic also makes adults fat," Lutter said.
For Kayla, the road ahead holds more immediate concerns. She has sores in her throat that make her not want to eat, and she is actually losing weight instead of gaining. It's hard to imagine that she will ever be able to attend school.
"What I worry about most [with these children] is education, the ability to learn" said Lepore, her doctor.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america/jan-june11/nutrition_02-16.html

India: obesity replaces hunger

India’s economic boom is changing the way its people die. Diseases linked to affluence, especially heart problems, are overtaking poverty-related illnesses such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea as the biggest killers
http://lifestyle24-7.com/?p=3316

Obesity a form of malnutrition

Inter Press Service examines malnutrition and factors contributing to the rising rates of "obesity and obesity-related illness - such as type II diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, some forms of cancer and osteoporosis - in Latin America, and especially among the poorest sectors of the population."
Though obesity and malnutrition "have traditionally been viewed as opposite extremes," Cecilia Albala of the University of Chile's Nutrition and Food Technology Institute said there is growing recognition among health experts that "obesity and undernourishment are … different forms of malnutrition, she explained," according to IPS. As Albala sees it, obesity and undernourishment are the results of "'inadequate prenatal, postnatal and early infant nutrition,' followed by 'exposure to diets high in fats and calories and low in micronutrients,'" IPS writes.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100407/IPS-examines-malnutrition-obesity-in-Latin-America.aspx