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Malnutrition

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Percentage of population affected by malnutrition by country, according to United Nations statistics.

MALNUTRITION IS A GENERAL TERM for the medical condition caused by an improper or insufficient diet. It most often refers to undernutrition resulting from inadequate consumption, poor absorption, or excessive loss of nutrients, but the term can also encompass overnutrition, resulting from overeating or excessive intake of specific nutrients. An individual will experience malnutrition if the appropriate amount of, or quality of nutrients comprising a healthy diet are not consumed for an extended period of time. An extended period of malnutrition can result in starvation.

Malnutrition as the lack of sufficient nutrients to maintain healthy bodily functions is typically associated with extreme poverty in economically developing countries. It is a common cause of reduced intelligence in parts of the world affected by famine such as Ethiopia. [1] Malnutrition as the result of inappropriate dieting, overeating or the absence of a "balanced diet" is often observed in economically developed countries (eg. as indicated by increasing levels of obesity).

Most commonly, malnourished people either do not have enough calories in their diet, or are eating a diet that lacks protein, vitamins, or trace minerals. Medical problems arising from malnutrition are commonly referred to as deficiency diseases. Scurvy is a well-known and now rare form of malnutrition, in which the victim lacks vitamin C.

Common forms of malnutrition include protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) and micronutrient malnutrition. PEM refers to inadequate availability or absorption of energy and proteins in the body. Micronutrient malnutrition refers to inadequate availability of some essential nutrients such as vitamins and trace elements that are required by the body in small quantities. Micronutrient deficiencies lead to a variety of diseases and impair normal functioning of the body. Deficiency in micronutrients such as Vitamin A reduces the capacity of the body to resist diseases. Deficiency in iron, iodine and vitamin A is widely prevalent and represent a major public health challenge. An array of afflictions ranging from stunted growth, reduced intelligence and various cognitive abilities, reduced sociability, reduced leadership and assertiveness, reduced activity and energy, reduced muscle growth and strength, and poorer health overall are directly implicated to nutrient deficiencies. Also, another, although rare, effect of malnutrition is black spots appearing on the skin.

Hunger is the normal psychological response brought on by the physiological condition of needing food. Hunger is often used as a metonym for general undernourishment.

Politics

The orange ribbon—an awareness ribbon for malnutrition.

As of 2006, malnutrition continues to be a worldwide problem. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, "850 million people worldwide were undernourished in 1999 to 2005, the most recent years for which figures are available" and the number of malnourished people has recently been increasing. An orange awareness ribbon is used to raise awareness of malnutrition in the world.[1]

There is a wide range of opinions as to why this problem is so persistent. Organizations such as Food First raise the issue of food sovereignty and claim that every country on earth (with the possible minor exceptions of some city-states) has sufficient agricultural capacity to feed its own people, but that the "free trade" economic order associated with such institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank prevent this from happening. At the other end of the spectrum, the World Bank itself claims to be part of the solution to malnutrition, claiming that the best way for countries to succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition is to build export-led economies that will give them the financial means to buy foodstuffs on the world market.

Amartya Sen won his 1998 Nobel Prize in part for his work demonstrating that malnutrition in modern times was not typically the product of a lack of food; rather, malnutrition usually arose from problems in food distribution networks or from governmental policies in the developing world. As of 2006 there are more overweight people than undernourished people in the world.

The politics of food trade and food security is often difficult to grasp. Many people are keen for instance to believe that sending food aid to the poor of the world is a worthy idea, and that each country should produce their own food. These concepts should be taken with a grain of salt. The idea that producing all the food internally increases food security and that foreign trade increases food insecurity and malnutrition is against the facts. Countries that have become more open to international trade in recent years (e.g. China, Vietnam or Peru) have greatly reduced the prevalence of undernourishment as measured by the FAO (food energy consumption below acceptable minimum) or as measured by the World Health Organization (WHO) by the percentage of children under 5 who are stunted, wasted or underweight. Countries that remained closed to external trade (e.g. North Korea) have not improved or have worsened their food situation. Some anti-globalization groups insist on "food sovereignty", i.e. the idea that each country should be physically self sufficient in every food item consumed by their people; by that account the US, the UK, Sweden or Belgium, and in fact almost all countries in the world would be quite food insecure, and a desert nation like Saudi Arabia should be in urgent need of international help and (with its current population) would not be viable as a country at all.

One policy adopted in recent decades to alleviate world malnutrition is food aid, i.e. the physical donation of food from rich to poor countries. From the rich donor countries' point of view, this is a suitable way to reduce excess supply created by domestic agricultural subsidies, stabilizing farm prices in rich countries, even if the cost of supplying the food to its final beneficiaries is often disproportionately high. Food aid may come for short-term emergencies (natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts and floods, or human-made like war and refugee flows) or in the form of a long-term program for an extended period. From the viewpoint of recipient countries, the value of food-aid depends on the form it takes. Emergency food aid is welcome, though aid in cash may also be welcome because the food may often be purchased locally in zones not affected by the emergency, thus benefitting local farmers. Long-term foreign food aid, instead, may discourage local production and distort markets. Long-term food-aid programs should be gradually replaced by aid oriented towards economic development, ultimately enabling poor people to get rid of aid and earn enough income to purchase their food (either locally produced or commercially imported, whichever is more convenient). Part of that economic development would probably encourage local farmers to shift their cropping patterns in favour of cash crops for the domestic or world markets.

Causes of Malnutrition

Eating nothing for a long period of time

Statistics

Number of undernourished people (million) in 2001-2003, according to the FAO, the following countries had 5 million or more undernourished people [2]:

Country Number of Undernourished (million)
India 198.0 8)
China 150.0
Bangladesh 43.1
Democratic Republic of Congo 37.0
Pakistan 35.2
Ethiopia 31.5
Tanzania 16.1
Philippines 15.2
Brazil 14.4
Indonesia 13.8
Vietnam 13.8
Thailand 13.4
Nigeria 11.5
Kenya 9.7
Sudan 8.8
Mozambique 8.3
North Korea 7.9
Yemen 7.1
Madagascar 6.5
Colombia 5.9
Zimbabwe 5.7
Mexico 5.1
Zambia 5.1
Angola 5.0

Note: This table measures "undernourishment", as defined by FAO, and represents the number of people consuming (on average for years 2001 to 2003) less than the minimum amount of food energy (measured in kilocalories per capita per day) necessary for the average person to stay in good health while performing light physical activity. It is a conservative indicator that does not takes into account the extra needs of people performing extrenous physical activity, nor seasonal variations in food consumption or other sources of variability such as inter-individual differences in energy requirements.

Malnutrition and undernourishment are cumulative or average situations, and not the work of a single day's food intake (or lack thereof). This table does not represent the number of people who "went to bed hungry today."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that in 2003, only 1 out of 200 U.S. households with children became so severely food insecure that any of the children went hungry even once during the year. A substantially larger proportion of these same households (3.8 percent) had adult members who were hungry at least one day during the year because of their households' inability to afford enough food.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa’s Future" article in the New York Times by Michael Wines, December 28, 2006
  2. ^ Ron Nielsen, The little green handbook, Picador, New York (2006) ISBN 0312425813
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