Archive for category: Food & Hunger

Information and stories on food.

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Nutrition in Sierra Leone

Of the deaths of children under 5 in Sierra Leone, 57 percent are the result of malnutrition, and both the ministry of health and government officials in Sierra Leone have begun work to reduce this horrifying statistic by joining Scaling Up Nutrition and by signing the Nutrition for Growth agreement.

As Sierra Leone recovers from its civil war, which ended in 2002, officials are attempting to shift the focus from malnutrition treatment to malnutrition prevention. Officials have been tracking the correlation between sanitation, education and malnutrition in order to improve prevention techniques.

In an interview with The Guardian, Aminata Shamit Koroma, the director of food and nutrition at the ministry of health in Sierra Leone, noted that women with a higher level of education were more likely to have access to adequate sanitation and less likely to have malnourished children.

In his efforts to prevent malnutrition in children, Koroma has been centering her campaign on breastfeeding and emphasizing to mothers the importance of breastfeeding their infants during the first six months of life. She has been spreading awareness through radio commercials and mother support groups.

Koroma has also been encouraging grandmothers to attend these mother-to-mother support groups so that they can impart their knowledge of child nutrition onto new mothers who might not be aware of the nutrients their children need. The Sierra Leone National Food and Security Food Policy of 2015-2016 also targets fathers so that they support their wives in breastfeeding. Besides emphasizing the future health of their children as a motivating factor, the initiative informs the families that if the mother is breastfeeding her child, they do not have to buy extra food for the child during the first few months of life.

The nutrition policy will also regulate the marketing of supposedly comparable and superior breast milk substitutes in order to ensure that mothers are not tricked by false sales promises. While Koroma knows it is unlikely that infant malnutrition will be eradicated within the next year or two, she recognizes the importance of the steps she is taking as she encourages the people of Sierra Leone to begin to change how they view infant health.

— Jordyn Horowitz

Sources: The Guardian, WHO, ACDI VOCA, Scaling up Nutrition
Photo: Mission News Wire

Super Bananas Could Help Millions

Decades ago, a new variety of rice featuring a golden hue was introduced into Asia. Developed by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Freiburg, the modified rice was created to boost vitamin A levels.

Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Australian researchers have now done the same with bananas. The super bananas, and the rice before it, are infused with alpha and beta-carotene — the hydrocarbon that both gives carrots their deep orange color and the body vitamin A.

By isolating the genes responsible for beta-carotene production found in a non-edible variety of bananas, researchers were able to transplant  and increase expression of the gene in the common variety of banana. This allows the bananas to produce more beta-carotene in order to fight vitamin A deficiency in these regions. Peeling back the skin of a genetically modified banana reveals a golden hue, similar to the modified rice.

Around the world in developing countries, vitamin A deficiency causes 650,000-700,000 child deaths and another 300,000 children to go blind each year. The modified banana is intended to be a feasible means of easing the problem. The banana is a staple food in East Africa despite its low levels of vitamin A and iron. Rather than shipping thousands of carrots to developing nations,which faces difficult logistical problems, researchers believe growing the food locally is a more feasible approach. Since bananas are a staple crop in the region already, researches need only to introduce the new variety to farmers who know the cultivation process.

Researchers are about to conduct their first human trials as the bananas are shipped to the United States where they will also undergo a six-week trial intended to measure their effect on vitamin A levels.

The plan is for the genetically modified bananas to be growing in Uganda by 2020. Once the bananas are approved for commercial cultivation in Uganda, the banana can be expanded to other countries including Rwanda, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania.

In West Africa, where the cultivation of plantain bananas is more common, researchers have said the technology could easily be transferred to that variety as well.

The modified banana has the potential to save millions of lives in developing nations where vitamin A deficiency is a real threat. The genetically modified banana is just another way that scientists have been able to improve different regions’ staple crops to provide more and better benefits to those struggling to survive.

— William Ying 

Sources: Discovery, ExtremeTech, The Telegraph, Cnet
Photo: Flickr

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The Effect of Unhealthy Lifestyles in Global Health

“Unhealthy diets are now a greater threat to global health than tobacco,” said U.N. Special Reporter on the Right to Food, Oliver De Schutter. “Just as the world came together to regulate the risks of tobacco, a bold framework convention on adequate diets must now be agreed.”

In May, 2014 at the 67th World Health Assembly in Geneva, WHO Director General Margaret Chan announced the creation of a Commission for Ending Childhood Obesity.

In 2012 alone, over 40 million children younger than 5 years old were considered to be overweight. Thirty million of these children live in developing countries. In addition, about 3.4 million adults die due to obesity each year. Furthermore, 7-41 percent of specific cancers and 44 percent of diabetes cases are due to obesity.

Around 1.7 millions deaths are due to low consumption of fruits and vegetables. Eating enough fruits and vegetables has been linked to reducing the chances of heart disease and stomach and colorectal cancers. In addition, compared to the recommended intake of five grams of salt per day, the average global consumption of salt is between nine and 12 grams, thus greatly increasing the chance of heart diseases.

In developing countries with growing economies, citizens have developed a less-active lifestyle and less healthy eating habits.

Schutter offered five potential solutions to the growing epidemic of obesity and unhealthy lifestyles:

  • Imposing a tax on unhealthy foods
  • Imposing regulations for foods with high contents of saturated fats, salt and sugar
  • Restricting advertising for unhealthy foods
  • Eliminating subsidies on agriculture that make some foods cheaper than others
  • Supporting production of local foods

By simply taxing sweet beverages in India, the amount of diabetes would drop by 3-4 percent.

While the focus of the public is often on a lack of access to food and starvation, it is also important to note the negative aspects of unhealthy lifestyles on nations around the world.

— Lily Tyson

Sources: Asia Sentinel, Fox News, SRFood, WHO
Photo: The Guardian

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Action Against Hunger

action against hunger

Founded in France in 1979 with a mission to affect humanitarian change by transforming the political landscape to prevent misfortune rather than merely responding to misfortune as it occurred, Action Against Hunger continues to be a major leader among humanitarian organizations. With more than 870 million people in the world still chronically undernourished, Action Against Hunger’s revolutionary approach to hunger is important now more than ever to eradicate hunger.

Action Against Hunger (which is also known as ACF, the initials for the organization’s name as it appears in French,) operates according to six central principles: direct access to victims, independence, neutrality, non-discrimination, professionalism and transparency. Their clear values have made them one of the most trusted nonprofit organizations in the last 30 years.

In those three decades, the organization has seen its fair share of hardship, serving communities in over 40 countries as they dealt with food insecurity, natural disaster, conflict situations and national emergencies. What is remarkable about Action Against Hunger, though, is that it does not simply seek to provide food to those who need it; Action Against Hunger also works to ensure the dignity of the communities and individuals it serves and to install sustainable solutions to hunger.

The organization also places high emphasis on children, and a large fraction of the 7 million people it serves per year are children.  Approximately 1 million children die unnecessarily of malnourishment – Action for Hunger’s work has driven that number down within the last several years, but its continued work to bring every child adequate food and healthy, accessible water will drive that number even further south soon.

With over 5,000 staff in the field to help carry out this admirable mission, Action Against Hunger brings yet another important weapon to the table: a nuanced understanding of the cultures within which it is working. By interacting in the communities they serve, organization employees and volunteers gain a crucial understanding of which strategies will work where, making the organization extremely effective at what it does.

 — Elise L. Riley

Sources: Action Contre la Faim, World Hunger, Action Against Hunger
Photo: Flickr

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Hunger in Pakistan: Famine or Inadequate Policy?

Hunger in Pakistan has killed many people and affected the lives of many more, especially children. After a drought hit the Tharparkar district of Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province earlier this year, at least 132 young children died, many as a result of malnutrition.

The problem of hunger in Pakistan is not limited to Sindh Province, however. While Sindh certainly has the highest rates of malnutrition and least access to food, Pakistan’s National Nutrition Survey reported that 58 percent of all Pakistani households were food-insecure.

Malnutrition is also widespread; the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey found that 24 percent of Pakistani children under 5 exhibited “severely stunted growth.”

Why is hunger such a prevalent issue in Pakistan? Some of it has to do with past inflation of wheat prices in the late 2000s, as it was more difficult for people to afford domestic grain. Infrastructural difficulty, such as providing electricity to flour mills, also poses a problem.

Still, the largest factor causing food insecurity in Pakistan is the nation’s own government and its policies that hinder food production and distribution.

Take, for example, the deaths from the drought: the government did not work to distribute food until after the crisis. As the Pakistan Dalit Solidarity Network reports, “the government didn’t act until [it received] reports of children dying” last December, even though animals had been dying since October and rainfall was decreasing. Moreover, government-run hospitals and clinics in the region have been constantly understaffed, making it difficult to get medical care to those who needed it.

Other government policies affect all of Pakistan, not just Sindh. Under the Corporate Farming Ordinance, the Pakistani government leases large tracts of land to foreign investors looking to stockpile crops for their own countries. This takes valuable land away from local farmers while keeping the food away from Pakistani citizens that need it.

The government of Pakistan seems to prioritize profits over its people. During the inflation of wheat prices in 2008, the government increased its wheat exports, depriving many hungry people of food. Even today, much of the wheat that large corporate mills produce leaves the country.

In reality, Pakistan should be capable of providing its citizens with enough food to survive, and there should not be as much food insecurity as there is now. Arif Jabbar Khan, Oxfam’s Pakistan director, affirmed that “missing public policy action and persistent economic inequalities are the main causes of malnutrition,” not droughts or famine.

How can hunger and malnutrition be reduced in Pakistan? Foreign aid providers may be able to earmark funds for the redistribution of grain to poorer areas, and this aid could be cut if the government does not comply.

Nevertheless, political pressure to change food distribution policy must come from within Pakistan itself. The citizens of Pakistan must demand change and hold elected officials responsible for their actions in the polls if the system is to be fixed.

 — Ted Rappleye

Sources: The Guardian, South Asia Masala, Triple Bottom-Line
Photo: Tribune

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The Jaden Tap Tap Initiative In Haiti

In the scorching city of Cité Soleil, Haiti, what was formerly a landfill in one of the most dangerous slums in the western hemisphere has grown into a beautiful community garden called Jaden Tap Tap that serves the people of the city.

Three men native to the city, Daniel Tillias, Herode Gary Laurent and Franz Francois, started the garden three years ago with the hope of providing a safe place for members of the community to come and take a break from their everyday lives.

“Making a garden is about more than cultivating plants, it’s about cultivating people,” Tillias said. “We want to give the people of Cité Soleil a model of success. Something to do. And something to eat too.”

The name of the garden, Jaden Tap Tap, is Haitian Creole for “garden taxi.” Tap tap is the name for the brightly colored taxis that circulate in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The community has embraced the meaning of the name by planting various colored flowers and a tree nursery.

The main tree that grows in the garden is called moringa. This type of tree is very beneficial for the people of the community. Its leaves are rich in protein and vitamins and can be added to juice, soup, cornmeal and rice. There are also 20 different types of vegetables and herbs grown in the garden, including peppers, chard, radishes, basil and parsley.

The garden has fostered a sense of self-sufficiency for many of its gardeners. Many families get their food from this garden, or they use this garden as a starting place for creating their own gardens. This has allowed the community to become more sustainable and has given many people a sense of pride in their community and themselves.

The Jaden Tap Tap initiative has grown into the largest urban garden in Haiti, and it has inspired other community-developing activities in the country. Various other gardens have been created and organizations have been formed to empower youth and develop sustainable lifestyles for Haitians.

– Hannah Cleveland 

Sources: The Guardian, Haiti Rewired
Photo: City Farmer News

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Good News for World Hunger

World hunger is a terrible thing, but in 2014 there seems to be more good news than bad.

The good news is that world hunger and chronic malnourishment have been decreasing in Latin American and Asian countries. It has, however, increased in some of the poorest African nations, but the increase in malnourished peoples was the lowest it has been in several years.

What advocacy groups and volunteers are doing is working; world hunger is completely solvable with just a little effort and a push in the right direction.

Advocacy for world hunger and global poverty began making good headway in reducing chronic malnutrition in the 1980s and the 1990s, but progress began to slow down between 2000 and 2010. Some of the more complicated and impoverished areas have seen growth in malnutrition since 2010, but overall things have either stayed the same or have slowly improved in the past four years.

More good news in world hunger is that the number of hungry people in the world has slowly trickled down from one billion to 870 million from 2009-2012, but has since gone back up to more than one billion.

There have been many advances on the war with hunger, however. There is a smaller percentage of the population in some areas (namely Latin America, Europe, the United States and Asia) of people who go without food.

As populations climb, the number of hungry people climbs with it, but through volunteer work and advocacy a larger percentage of the population has made it out of poverty.

Society has seen more technological advances to deal with world hunger and global poverty, but in recent years man power and monetary aid has declined, leaving the advancements instead of the people to take care of the problems.

According to UNICEF, world hunger will see more good news because in recent years global poverty and chronic malnutrition has become more manageable. It is now easier to donate than it ever has been through cell phone applications like the Spare Change Application or rounding up on purchases to help someone in need.

World hunger is seeing fewer donations, but it is also seeing a decline in the percentage of people living in poverty and with malnutrition. It has also become more manageable and less of an undertaking and many people can now donate and help without even a second thought.

Advocacy and aid is becoming easier in the digital age and because of that, world hunger is considered to be in decline in some countries.

– Cara Morgan

Sources: Grist, Lake Tahoe News, WFP, Yahoo
Photo: Working Abroad

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10 Facts About Malnutrition in Children

Child hunger is a very significant issue today. World Hunger defines hunger as protein-energy malnutrition, or a lack of calories and protein. UNICEF estimates state that malnutrition in children affects nearly 195 million worldwide. Discussed below are the leading facts about malnutrition in children and its implications.

 

Top 10 Facts on Malnutrition in Children

 

  1. Malnutrition can begin as early as conception. If a mother does not receive proper nutrition during pregnancy, her child will already be at risk of developmental problems. This means that early intervention is crucial.
  2. Children have a two-year period, beginning at conception and continuing into infancy, known as the “window of opportunity.” During this time, a child can be guarded against the most devastating effects of malnutrition.
  3. Malnutrition presents itself in three ways: stunting (shorter-than-average height), wasting (having a low weight for one’s height) and being underweight (having a low weight for one’s age.)
  4. A malnourished child can suffer neurological damage. Brain damage is one of many health issues caused by malnutrition, and it can lower IQ, even resulting in mental retardation for some children.
  5. Children are affected in more areas than their brains — their immune systems are at risk, too. Children who are malnourished are more likely to die from common childhood ailments, like diarrhea and respiratory illnesses.
  6. Malnutrition is more than just a lack of food, it’s a lack of nutrients. Malnourished children often suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which have the most negative effects on their health. Recall that children suffering from hunger can develop brain damage. This is due in part to iron deficiency; so is the decreased ability to fight off common infections.
  7. Child hunger kills in colossal numbers. It contributes one-third of the 8 million deaths each year of children younger than 5 years old.
  8. The main cause of child malnutrition is poverty. Conversely, hunger contributes to poverty, creating a vicious cycle. Another factor contributing to malnutrition is conflict: years of civil war in Libya have put parents in a difficult position without access to food for their families. Natural disasters, particularly droughts and floods, are also contributors to child malnutrition.
  9. North Korea had the highest percentage of children under 5 years old who were underweight between the years of 1995 and 2000, and 60 percent of children under 5 were underweight during this time.
  10. As of 2000, more than half of the world’s underweight children lived in southern Asia.

Unfortunately, many of today’s food aid programs are not targeting malnutrition. The programs are relying heavily on a corn-soy cereal blend that simply does not contain the required nutrients to keep children from becoming malnourished. While these programs are relieving hunger, many children receiving aid are still deprived of valuable nutrients that they will need to grow into successful, healthy adults.

 — Rachel Davis

Sources: ChildFund, Starved for Attention, UNICEF, World Hunger
Photo: U.N.

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Global Poverty Statistics 2013

Global Poverty Statistics
According to the Global Poverty Statistics for 2013, nearly half of the world’s population, (that’s more than 3 billion people,) can live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, which is less than $1.25 a day.

As of 2013, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, there are roughly 870 million people on the planet who suffer from chronic malnourishment; this is a large part of what makes up global poverty. This means, that 1 in 8 people suffer from not having enough food to eat.

However, there was some good news for malnourished and impoverished people in Asia and the Pacific. Asia saw new socio-economic advancements in 2013, which decreased those who suffered from severe malnourishment by 30 percent.

Latin America and the Caribbean also saw improvements in 2013. The chronic malnourished of Latin America and the Caribbean fell from 65 million to 49 million. That means where there used to be 15 percent of the population suffering from undernourishment, there is now only 8 percent of the population suffering.

In Africa in 2013, however, the number of people hungry and chronically undernourished grew by 2 percent over the period of a year. The conditions of neither the African people nor their economic status has improved much in the past several years. In this case, the number of chronic malnourished people rose from 175 million in 2013, to 239 million in 2013.

More women are hungry than men; 60 percent of women go hungry to 40 percent of men. Many women who are pregnant will still be malnourished due to a lack of maternal care being offered in their countries. This means, annually, 240,000 women will die in childbirth.

According to global poverty statistics from UNICEF, one billion children in the world today are faced with extreme global poverty, and 22,000 will die each day due to the impoverished conditions of their countries.

Due to global poverty, many children and their families cannot afford vaccinations that would fight off and prevent disease. This means, thousands, if not millions, of children will die this year alone due to preventable causes such as malaria, polio or hunger.

As the World Food Programme said, “The poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.” Hunger is the number one cause of death in the world, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

According to the global poverty statistics of 2013, malnourishment is one of the most dangerous things facing the world’s impoverished peoples. Starvation, malnourishment and unclean drinking water kill more people than almost anything else in the world. Every single one of those problems is preventable through advocacy and donations.

According to poverty facts, 1.6 billion people, or a quarter of the entire world’s population, lives without electricity in addition to facing extreme poverty and hardship.

The world’s poor should not have to live in a world of darkness and fear of where their next meal will come from. Every single problem the impoverished world faces can be prevented through advocacy and donations.

 — Cara Morgan

Sources: DoSomething, The Hunger Project, World Hunger
Photo: Flickr

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Lifespans Increasing In Poorest Countries

Life expectancy has risen in the past two decades by over nine years. Both wealthy and impoverished nations have managed to raise their citizens’ lifespans. In the wealthier countries, less people are dying from heart diseases by the age of 60. According to the U.N.’s World Health Organization annual statistics, six countries’ babies are healthier, with less dying before the age of 5, explained Margaret Chan, World Health Organization chief, in a statement.

The six poorest countries managed to raise life expectancy by over 10 years between 1990 and 2012. Liberia’s lifespans increased the most by 20 years (42 to 62).

The next few countries that were able to significantly raise their lifespans are Ethiopia (from 45 to 64 years), Maldives (58 to 77), Cambodia (54 to 72), East Timor (50 to 66) and Rwanda (48 to 65).

According to the WHO, a girl who was born in 2012 will most likely live to be approximately 73-years old and a boy up to 68-years old.

More people are starting to live longer because of an increase in food supplies, better nutrition, improvements in medical supplies and technology (immunizations and antibiotics), improved sanitation and hygiene and safer water supplies.

Although the life spans in Africa are the lowest, they have still made a significant increase by about 10 percent . Malaria deaths have decreased by 30 percent and HIV infections have also decreased by 74 percent.

A great contribution to the increasing lifespans is the larger income Africans are making, which has increased by 30 percent.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Mozambique, has made huge improvement due to the discoveries of coal and gas.

Today, this is proof that people are able to make a change in others’ lives — the ones who need it the most. Although the poorest countries still have the shortest lifespans, they have definitely increased. Over the next few decades, one could expect even more growth.

 —  Priscilla Rodarte

Sources: ENCA, SF Gate, Geography, The Independent