Nutrition, Food Security, and Global Health

I am shocked that undernutrition is an underlying cause of 53% of deaths among children under five years of age. That alone should justify the importance of nutrition and food security in regards to global health. How do we expect people to function and cooperate in succeeding other global health issues and goals when people are not able to function at their best due to malnutrition?

Because malnutrition refers to undernutrition and overnutrition, it affects the whole word. The developing countries suffering more undernutrition and the developed countries suffering more overnutrition.

I am interested in the "Double Burden: Households with Underweight and Overweight Members" chart. I am confused how this is a possibility. I always assumed that underweight or overweight affects the family as a whole and not individually impacted within a family. I always linked access to food with social context and family as a whole. I imagined food as being shared and a common variable within a family. I really would like to hear insight on this.

With all the statistics and charts we have been shown, the "Estimated Contribution of Major Determinants to Reductions in Child Malnutrition, 1970-95" chart was not as surprising as the other charts. Approximately 55% of the reductions in child malnutrition was affected by the mother. It is not a surprise that the more educated the mother, the less child malnutrition occurs.

I feel micronutrient malnutrition ("Hidden Hunger") is becoming more and more pertinent in global health. The scary thing about micronutrient malnutrition is that it is hard to detect especially if the person has other comorbidities. The comforting thing about micronutrient malnutrition is that methods of prevention are cheap and simple. I remember working with UNICEF in raising money to eradicate iodine deficiency. UNICEF has goals to fix micronutrient malnutrition globally specifically iodine, iron, and vitamin A (http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_iodine.html).

While reading the UNICEF website I found another reason why nutrition and food security is of great importance in global health.

"HIV-infected mothers face an agonizing choice when deciding how to feed their infants. Without preventative interventions, about 5-20 per cent of infants born to infected mothers will contract the virus through breastmilk if breastfed for two years. (Every year 200,000 infants become HIV+ in this way.) At the same time, if a mother does not breastfeed, her infant will face a six times greater chance of dying in her or his first two months of life from infectious diseases such as diarrhoea and respiratory infections." (http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_HIV.html)

We as global health professionals need to realize that malnutrition is the underlying cause of a great portion of deaths among people in the world. I am not sure if it is possible to calculate how big this portion is but with all the facts about malnutrition linked to diseases, we can definitely assume and imagine the magnitude of impact. Nutrition and food security is extremely important to global health if not the most important!

Because malnutrition affects 1/8 of the children in developing worlds and 4 out of the 8 will die, I feel Liyan's article "Local production and provision of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) spread for the treatment of severe childhood malnutrition" brings light to an important solution. This article is future-focused and innovative. More research should be done to find ways to fund this new innovation but I look forward to hearing more about the progress of this solution in severely malnourished children of developing countries.

Last but not least, as I have mentioned in my previous entries, I am all for policy limiting restaurants to serving actual portion sizes rather than "bigger is better". This will help the malnutrition (overnutrition) problem in the United States while possibly distributing the food to developing countries to help the malnutrition (undernutrition) problem in those parts of the world.