State of malnutrition and its fast growing wing in developing countries

Abstract

Nutrition is one of the most important issues for the well-being of human life. It concerns rich and poor, rural and urban, developed and developing countries. Since, it is not a specific problem for some part of the world only, like most other problems, it should get serious attention as it deserves.. Accordingly, different literatures show that, for millions of people worldwide, hunger and malnutrition are common everyday challenges; for some, even famine is a threat. But in many developed countries, food abundance brings other serious nutritional and health problems. Though these are being addressed, western habits are starting to spread.
However, most of literatures focus more on the undernutrition aspect of malnutrition, rather than overnutrition. Malnutrition is a broad term which refers to both undernutrition (sub nutrition) and overnutrition. Individuals are malnourished, or suffer from undernutrition if their diet does not provide them with adequate calories and protein for maintenance and growth, or they cannot fully utilize the food they eat due to illness. People are also malnourished, or suffer from overnutrition if they consume too many calories. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malnutrition is the gravest single threat to global public health. And according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the number of people globally who were malnourished stood at 923 million in 2007, an increase of over 80 million since the 1990-92 base -period. In more wealthy industrialized nations malnutrition is usually caused by: Poor diet, mental health problems, Mobility problems, digestive disorders and stomach conditions, alcoholism. In poor, developing nations malnutrition is commonly caused by: Food shortages, Food prices, food distribution and Lack of breastfeeding.
In this research nine countries from different continent are included. And the result of this assessment shows that there is high-rate of growth as far as overnutrition is concerned, in both high income and low income countries for both sexes. And the percentage growth of overweight and obesity for some low-income countries is very significant. Cameron is the one that shows high obesity rate from the low-income countries. And, France is the country that shows a low growth rate for overweight from high-income countries. The study also figure out that, there is a high positive relationship between the energy consumption and overweight.