The rising global burden of nutrition-related diseases
calls for concerted action. There is an emerging urgent need to resolve
acute and chronic hunger, malnutrition, and under nutrition.
In particular, compromised nutritional status of mothers and children
very early in life has significant impact on the future occurrence of
chronic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Concurrently, populations are faced with increasing implications of
overweight and obesity. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates
that in 2005, more than 1 billion people were overweight and 300 million
obese, with projections of 1.5 billion people overweight by 2015.
Worldwide, 44 percent of diabetes burden, 23 percent of ischemic heart
disease burden, and 7 to 41 percent of the burden of some cancers can be
attributed to overweight and obesity
let’s examine what food security really is. In 1996, the Food and
Agriculture Organization defined it as: “Food security, at the
individual, household, national, regional and global level [is achieved]
when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and
food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
The definition includes all aspects of the malnutrition spectrum, and while underweight and stunting are more traditional concerns, we must pay greater attention to obesity and its consequences. It is no longer rare to see overweight children with nutrient insufficiency.
There are natural links between food security and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes and cancer, which together cause nearly two out of three deaths in the world (80 percent of those in developing countries). People everywhere have increasingly similar diets and increasingly similar health risks. Even very poor populations are showing high rates of high blood pressure, diabetes and other diet-related NCDs -– while still facing hunger and traditional food insecurity.
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