Unless radical changes are
made, warns the lead author of a new WHO report, "the growth and
development of individuals and societies for decades to come" are at risk.
Monday, December 16, 2019
A multi-part World Health
Organization report published
Monday in the British medical journal The Lancet detailed the need to
urgently transform the world's failing food systems to combat the coexistence
of undernourishment and obesity—or the "double burden of
malnutrition."
Based on global data from
recent decades, the WHO report estimated that more than 150 million children
are stunted worldwide while nearly 2.3 billion children and adults—about 30% of
the planet's human population—are
overweight.
Dr. Francesco Branca, the
report's lead author and director of the WHO's Department of Nutrition for
Health and Development, said that
"we can no longer characterize countries as low-income and undernourished,
or high-income and only concerned with obesity."
As he put it: "We are
facing a new nutrition reality."
This new reality "is
driven by changes to the food system, which have increased availability of
ultra-processed foods that are linked to increased weight gain, while also
adversely affecting infant and pre-schooler diets," said co-author and
University of North Carolina professor Barry Popkin. "These changes
include disappearing fresh food markets, increasing supermarkets, and the
control of the food chain by supermarkets, and global food, catering and
agriculture companies in many countries."
Considering these changes,
Branca explained that "all forms of malnutrition have a common
denominator—food systems that fail to provide all people with healthy, safe,
affordable, and sustainable diets."
"Changing this will
require action across food systems—from production and processing, through
trade and distribution, pricing, marketing, and labeling, to consumption and
waste," he added. "All relevant policies and investments must be
radically re-examined."
This is especially true for
the more than a third of low- and middle-income countries that face "the two extremes of
malnutrition." A WHO statement highlighted the
following regions: sub-Saharan Africa, south and east Asia, and the Pacific.
Authors of the WHO report
urged world governments, the United Nations, civil society, academics, the
media, donors, the private sector, and economic platforms to pursue fundamental
changes to global food systems with the aim of ending mass malnutrition. Doing
so, according to the authors, means seeking assistance from grassroots groups,
farmers and their unions, faith-based leaders, advocates for planetary health,
leaders of green companies, local politicians, and consumer associations.
"Given the political
economy of food, the commodification of food systems, and growing patterns of
inequality worldwide, the new nutrition reality calls for a broadened community
of actors who work in mutually reinforcing and interconnected ways on a global
scale," said Branca. "Without a profound food system transformation,
the economic, social, and environmental costs of inaction will hinder the
growth and development of individuals and societies for decades to come."
The report acknowledged that
fighting malnutrition requires successfully promoting healthier diets, which
WHO defines as: optimal breastfeeding practices in the first two years; a wide
variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fiber, nuts, and seeds; and
limited amounts of animal products—particularly processed meats—as well as
foods and beverages high in sugar, saturated fat, trans fat, and salt.
"Today's publication of
the WHO Series on the Double Burden of Malnutrition comes after 12 months
of Lancet articles exploring nutrition in all its forms," wrote The
Lancet editor-in-chief Dr. Richard Horton in an editorial accompanying the
report.
"With these and other
articles across Lancet journals throughout 2019, it has become clear
that nutrition and malnutrition need to be approached from multiple
perspectives," Horton continued, "and although findings have
sometimes converged, there is still work to be done to understand
malnutrition's multiple manifestations."
In January, as Common
Dreams reported,
more than three dozen experts with the EAT-Lancet Commission called for a
"global agricultural revolution" and people worldwide to adopt a
"planetary health diet" to tackle the harmful nutritional and environmental
impacts of the world's unhealthy, unsustainable food system.
Co-lead commissioner Dr.
Walter Willett of Harvard University explained at the time that "to be
healthy, diets must have an appropriate calorie intake and consist of a variety
of plant-based foods, low amounts of animal-based foods, unsaturated rather
than saturated fats, and few refined grains, highly processed foods, and added
sugars."
