Millions of Children Suffer from Hunger or Malnutrition
At least one-third of children under five years old, meaning 200 million boys and girls, do not eat enough food or receive adequate quality nutrition. UNICEF states this is the reason for malnutrition, overweight, or severe thinness in these children.
At least one-third of children under five years old worldwide, meaning 200 million boys and girls, do not eat enough food or receive adequate quality nutrition. UNICEF says that because of this, they suffer from malnutrition, overweight, or severe thinness.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that two-thirds of children aged six months to two years worldwide do not have access to appropriate food for their physical and mental development. UNICEF’s report was released on the eve of October 16, World Food Day.
Experts warn that children’s brains do not develop properly with poor or insufficient food, and they will later face learning problems; in addition, their immune systems become so weak that they collapse with the slightest illness.
Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of UNICEF, said: “Despite all the technological, cultural and social progress in recent years, we have overlooked a fundamental truth; that if children are malnourished, they will live poorly.”
This UNICEF official warned that methods of diagnosing and addressing malnutrition must change: “The issue is not whether children eat enough food, but rather the real point is that they are properly nourished.”
UNICEF’s report lists different forms of childhood malnutrition. 50 million children suffer from food shortage and are very thin. 40 million children under five are overweight or obese. 149 million other young children have not grown as much as necessary due to nutritional deficiencies, and 340 million children are affected by complications resulting from vitamin or mineral deficiencies.
Nutrition experts criticize, more than anything else, the widespread consumption of fast food, junk food, and sugary carbonated drinks among children.
This dietary pattern has spread beyond developed countries, and UNICEF warns about it. Most of all, poor families feed their children with cheap, ready-made, and low-quality foods. The statistics of children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 years old who are overweight have doubled between 2000 and 2016 due to consumption of such foods and soft drinks. For example, in 2016, the proportion of overweight German children was 26.6 percent, which represented a 37 percent increase compared to 1990.
UNICEF’s report states that poor eating habits begin from the very first day of a newborn’s life. For example, although breast milk is the best nutrition for children, only 42 percent of children under six months are breastfed. The sale of formula milk in middle-income countries such as Brazil, China, or Turkey has also clearly increased, and UNICEF attributes the reason more than anything else to “inappropriate advertising and marketing”; something that has caused children after six months of age to be fed with inappropriate ready-made and manufactured foods.
