Next year’s Global Nutrition Summit in Japan marks the start of a demanding Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) race to end malnutrition by 2030. But if we are to have any chance of crossing the finishing line in time, we have to run a different race to the one we have been running for the past 5 years.
First, how do we have to eat differently to significantly reduce malnutrition? Second, what food production systems do we have to put in place to use natural resources sustainably and live within climate change targets? The EAT Lancet Report is a landmark because it answers these two questions simultaneously.
The EAT-Lancet Commission is the first robust, extensive review of the evidence combining criteria for healthy dietary changes with environmental analyses of food system’s impacts, to find common ground that results in recommendations for food systems transformation. It is an impressive piece of work; a daunting task to include all the key components and supporting analyses into a single journal article.
Wherever you look in the global food system, there are obvious differences between men and women. These differences are not only intrinsically unjust, they also have functional consequences. And the societal differences between men and women drive malnutrition in the next generation, with both women’s education and the degree of gender equality having been shown to be strong determinants of stunting in children.
5000 adolescent girls – known as the "Golden Girls" – assembled on 19 December 2017 in the Sultana Kamal Mohila Complex, Dhaka, to celebrate the launch of the national "Adolescent Nutrition Campaign". For the Golden Girls – and many more adolescent girls in the country – this campaign represents a window of opportunity to push further the development of Bangladesh.
I just finished reading ‘Why you eat what you eat' by Professor Rachel Herz. Fascinating, and together with Professor Michael Spence’s “Gastrophysics” it caused me to reflect on the radical changes we need to effectively promote healthy and nutritious diets, and reverse the out-of-control trends in malnutrition affecting every country.
Funding for nutrition has increased significantly over the past 10 years, which is a very good thing. So has the number of initiatives, organisations and programmes addressing nutrition. But is this an unqualified good thing?
Kenya was one of the Global Nutrition Report’s (GNR) star performers in 2017 in terms of stunting reduction – with levels nationally of 26%. Yet, the country is in full “double burden” mode with undernutrition and other manifestations of malnutrition such as obesity and diabetes running in parallel, often in the same communities or families.
Babies are the nutritionist’s biggest challenge. Their rapidly developing minds and bodies need large doses of nutrients, yet their stomachs are small and unable to hold much of anything. This is why nutritionists have worked for decades on the development of special foods for low-income settings, including both fortified porridges and fortified products in powder or paste form which can be added to standard family foods.
New IFPRI paper pulls together data on the food intake of 112,553 children 6-23 months old contained within Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 46 low and middle income countries since 2006.
