Malnutrition Around the World
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As of 2018, more than 820 million people didn’t have enough to eat each day [FN1].
Despite significant progress in recent years, malnutrition remains a global crisis that impacts and kills millions of people each year. The World Health Organization estimates that, worldwide, there are 462 million people who are underweight due to malnutrition, and that 45% of deaths in children under five years old are linked to insufficient nutrition [FN2].
What is Malnutrition?
Malnutrition occurs when the body isn’t receiving the correct food to nourish itself. It can be caused by poor diet, disease & digestive conditions, or inadequate of access to food. According to the UK’s National Health Service, symptoms of malnutrition include [FN3]:
Weight loss
Fatigue
Weakness
Wounds that take a long time to heal
Low mood and/or depression
Feeling cold most of the time
Getting sick often and taking a long time to recover
However, despite what many people think, malnutrition doesn’t only describe the condition of eating too little. In reality, malnutrition encompasses three broad groups of conditions [FN2]:
Undernutrition (consuming too little – includes wasting, stunting and underweight)
Micronutrient malnutrition (consuming too much or too little of a specific nutrient, such as iron)
Overweight/obesity, plus diet-related “lifestyle” diseases like heart disease or type 2 diabetes
Obesity-related malnutrition is most prevalent in the United States, but it is not the leading cause of malnutrition worldwide. In most countries, the high rates of death and illness due to malnutrition are caused by hunger (undernutrition), caused mainly by poor access to food sources.
Causes of Malnutrition
A number of underlying issues make malnutrition the global crisis it is today.
The most prevalent causes of hunger are poverty and lack of access to food. This is particularly problematic in developing countries, where extreme poverty often worsens food insecurity in vulnerable populations [FN4].
Disease is also a major contributing factor. Certain illnesses and infections (such as chronic diarrhea and HIV) can cause malnutrition, while others (such as measles) prove much more fatal in children with underlying malnutrition [FN5].
Contagious diseases like COVID-19, are especially problematic because malnourished individuals have weaker immunity and a higher susceptibility to disease [FN6]. They can then carry the disease to neighbors and caretakers. If people become severely ill or need treatment that strains the household’s resources so others cannot eat, even more people go hungry as a result of the disease process – regardless of whether or not the disease itself spreads.
Conflicts and climate change also impact food insecurity. Areas that are riddled by conflict have significantly less access to food sources because suppliers and distributors are cut-off. Furthermore, those fleeing violence often find themselves unable to maintain farms and small businesses, leading to inability to grow crops and higher poverty levels. Climate change also disproportionately and negatively affects vulnerable populations, as global warming makes more and more farmland infertile and natural disasters damage farms, increase the spread of diseases & destroy infrastructure [FN4].
Who’s Most at Risk?
Every country has populations that suffer from some form of malnutrition. In terms of hunger, however, women, infants, and children in developing countries experience the greatest risk. Biologically speaking, women are most likely to suffer from undernourishment – particularly if they’re menstruating, pregnant, or lactating – because of increased calorie needs and, in many places, social norms that make if harder for them to get the food they need.
Malnourished mothers are also more likely to give birth to malnourished children, which leaves children at higher risk of being undernourished from an early age [FN7]. This is problematic because inadequate nutrition in the early stages of life can lead to chronic health issues such as stunting, poor immunity, developmental delays, and even death in the most severe cases.
Extreme poverty and inability to provide an adequate or nutritionally rich diet means that lower income households are less likely to have access to nutritious foods.
On a countrywide level, given that hunger leads to fatigue and low mood, high rates of malnutrition within a population may reduce productivity and contribute to slow economic growth [FN2].
Going forward in the battle to reduce global malnutrition, it’s important to find ways to decrease poverty and increase access to food sources for vulnerable populations. If you’re interested in learning or doing more, these global organizations are already working hard to alleviate the burden of hunger in many countries around the world.
Resources
1. http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition
2. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malnutrition
3. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/malnutrition/symptoms/
4. https://actionagainsthunger.ca/what-is-acute-malnutrition/underlying-causes-of-malnutrition/
5. https://pedsinreview.aappublications.org/content/19/2/70
6. https://www.ifpri.org/blog/covid-19-nutrition-crisis-what-expect-and-how-protect
7. https://www.worldhunger.org/women-and-hunger-facts/