Food is linked to NCDs உடலை உண்ணும் உணவு எனும் தலைப்பில் மருத்துவர் கு.சிவராமனின் அருமையான உரை!

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.