January 29, 2020
In what ways do hunger and malnutrition impact children's futures?
Hunger and malnutrition impact children's development in a number of ways: in addition to being the main causes of infant mortality, they have cognitive, social and emotional effects, affecting abilities such as memory and attention.
Whatandfood safety?
In Brazil, all citizens have the right to food and nutritional security. The Federal Constitution and the Statute of Children and Adolescents state that all Brazilian children have the permanent right to healthy food, in sufficient quantity, with nutritional quality.
In other words, it means that everyone should be able to eat three basic meals a day, in good quantity and made up of foods with the nutrients and minerals necessary for a healthy life.
Families that are unable to offer their members these three meals throughout the day find themselves in a situation of Food Insecurity. This can happen when there is not enough food for everyone or when the quality of the food is low, that is, when even though it “fills your belly” the meal has low nutritional content. In these cases, we say that people are suffering from hunger or malnutrition.
What is the situation regarding hunger and malnutrition in Brazil?
Approximately 3.6% of the Brazilian population is in a situation of food insecurity. In other words, there are approximately 7.2 million people suffering from malnutrition in the country (data from the IBGE from 2013, the most recent measurement on hunger in the country). The UN report “The state of food security and nutrition in the world” from 2018 indicates that less than 2.5% of Brazilians are in a situation of hunger, a seemingly low number, but which represents approximately 5 million people.
The differences between hunger and malnutrition, however, create a peculiarity: there is a correlation between obesity and food insecurity. As in countries like Mexico and the United States, the lack of food security in Brazil increases the likelihood of a person becoming obese. In other words, contrary to the stereotype that a malnourished person is thin, it is possible to be overweight and have nutritional deficiencies. This happens for a combination of reasons, such as the lack of information and awareness about healthy eating and the discrepancy in prices between ultra-processed foods with low nutritional content and fresh foods.
What is the impact of food insecurity on children?ance?
Malnutrition and hunger are especially harmful to children: the impact on physical and cognitive development in the first two years of life is often irreversible.
Physical risks include weakness, low immune systems that leave bodies vulnerable to contracting a range of diseases, malformation and even blindness. Adults who were malnourished as children are at greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
From a cognitive perspective, the problems are different. Hunger and malnutrition hinder the development of skills such as attention, memory, reading and language learning as a whole, which in turn leads to poor academic performance. Over the course of a child's life, this can have a cascading effect: children who have learning difficulties due to food insecurity do poorly in school and are more likely to drop out, as well as have lower prospects of earning a good salary or holding down a steady job as adults. Impacts of this nature are not limited to academic performance, but also affect children's decision-making skills and socio-emotional development.
Children who suffer from food insecurity have their development and future prospects harmed. Hunger and malnutrition are public health problems that generate several negative and long-lasting consequences for the population.
And what can be done?
There are several factors that hinder food security: poverty, climate change, infrastructure, basic sanitation, access to information, among others.
To meet this challenge, it is necessary to develop public policies that span several areas, ranging from campaigns to encourage healthy eating to poverty reduction, so that everyone can have access to the nutritious food that a human being needs for healthy development. In Brazil, public policies developed in this regard are developed under the National Food and Nutrition Security System (Sisan).
Children eat inside and outside of school , so feeding children is, in practice, a shared responsibility . The effort and concern for healthy eating from an early age pays off, and mealtime is also a learning opportunity , both for children and adults.