Global Hunger and Malnutrition

In the second unit of "Death" in Food for Thought, we learned about global trade and "fair trade" history and colonialism. We learned about how agriculture influenced greed in people, how foods from different countries got imported to where they are today, and how resources impacted the behavior in people. For our Field Experience, we went to S.K.Y restaurant in Pilsen where we met a sommelier named Charles Ford. He talked to us about his job as a sommelier and the history behind his restaurant. For this action project, we were asked to look back on the past, literally. We looked back at our first Humanities course, SDGs & You. We focused on SDG 2 and decided on a specific target of the SDG. I wanted to focus on a target that is a symptom of hunger so, I chose malnutrition. This target on malnutrition was challenging when it came to the history of malnutrition. The most difficult part of this project was filming the video. Overall I think that I completed a great project.

Food For Thought -AP2 NL from NL on Vimeo.

“1 out of 2 children in Guatemala suffer from malnutrition. People from Central American countries such as Guatemala are coming to the United States’ and Mexico’s border seeking asylum because of issues like malnutrition plagues. Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 16 goals that we should achieve by the year 2030. These goals were created by the United Nations. I will be addressing target 2.2 of the goal Zero Hunger. This target is a global priority because due to malnutrition, people and children in third world countries are on the edge of dying. Malnutrition in pregnant women and children 2 years old or younger can affect a child for the rest of their lives and the conditions can’t be fixed as they get older. Some of the conditions are stunting in growth, being underweight for one’s age, and wasting; being dangerously thin for one’s height. A solution to achieving this target is food fortification in staple foods and condiments. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for the issue of malnutrition and bring awareness to this issue.

I chose Target 2.2, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons. According to UNICEF, “Malnutrition develops when the body does not get the proper amount of calories, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients required to keep the organs and tissues healthy and functioning well. A child or adult can be malnourished by being undernourished or overnourished.” Undernourishment is when someone can’t acquire enough food to meet dietary energy requirements. Overnourishment is when someone gets too much food that exceeds their dietary energy requirements. “More than one-third of all child deaths every year around the world are attributed to malnutrition.” The United Nations has identified hunger as a global priority because global hunger and malnutrition affects the lives of millions all over the world, but mostly “underdeveloped” countries. According to Global Goals, “Hunger is the leading cause of death in the world. Our planet has provided us with tremendous resources, but unequal access and inefficient handling leaves millions of people malnourished.”

Malnutrition isn’t just a recent issue but has major issue been for many years. Malnutrition dates far as back to the existence of the ancient Egyptians. A civilization that faced malnutrition like we do today were the ancient Mayans. They were argued to fell as an empire and civilization due to drought, warfare, disease, or even political instability. Today we think that all these things played a role and were only symptoms in the fall of the Mayans. According to NASA Science, researchers used classic archaeology techniques to find that human bones from the last decades before the Mayan civilization’s collapse shows signs of severe malnutrition. The root cause was a chronic food and water shortage, due to some combination of natural drought and deforestation by humans." Their agriculture was based on slash and burn and clear-cutting methods which resulted in deforestation for fertile land to grow crops. According to Empires of Food, “A sustainable food empire can only exist if most of its farms are smallish, diverse, and serving customers not too far away.” We can learn that unsustainable methods of agriculture lead to negative impacts on land over time.

Malnutrition and hunger have both resulted in the death of millions and billions of people in our world throughout history. The Mayan civilization’s population grew in masses which led to a demand for more food. They addressed this problem by replacing their neighboring jungles with maize fields by using deforestation methods in order to get more land for agriculture. The result of these deforestation methods was that they trapped themselves into a broken hydrological cycle which caused their fields to dry up and crops to die. They also suffered from relying on and growing crops such as maize, beans, and squash together. Something we can learn from this history is that malnutrition can be prevented with sustainable practices of agriculture and food productivity.

If these global issues of malnutrition and hunger continue in the future masses of people and children around the world will continue to suffer and die. To achieve this target of ending all forms of malnutrition, some contributions would be food fortification in staple foods such as bread and potatoes, food security in poverty-stricken areas, and an increase in the prices of unhealthy foods since they are cheaper to buy compared to healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables. Large scale food fortification is the process of adding micronutrients to foods or condiments consumed regularly by the population. If we did this in “developing” countries, more people will have access to the food and nutrients they need. Poverty in areas also affect the diets of people within a poverty-stricken area. According to Global Citizen, “donors should increase long-term funding for the prevention and community-based management of acute malnutrition. This will stray away from the current short term, emergency only funding approaches.” Long term donations would help bring this issue of malnutrition to an end by giving aid to areas where there is a lack of food and resources. Malnutrition can be eradicated overtime with these solutions.

These global issues of malnutrition and hunger might not affect me but they affect people living on this planet just like you and me. My main argument is that we need to think about all the people on this planet and not only people around us where we live. Ending all forms of malnutrition should also be prioritized just as much as the issue of hunger because it affects children in their early lives. My recommendations will help achieve this goal of Zero Hunger and target of ending all forms of malnutrition by helping areas with food insecurity get the food and nutrients they need. How will you help contribute to eradicating this global issue of hunger?

Works Cited

“Feeding a Family, Nourishing a Community - United Nations Development Programme | UNDP.” Exposure, 2017, stories.undp.org/feeding-a-family-nourishing-a-community. Accessed 3 May 2019.

“Goal 2: Zero Hunger.” The Global Goals, 16 Sept. 2016, www.globalgoals.org/2-zero-hunger. Accessed 6 May 2019.

‌Nations, United. “Goal 2: End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition and Promote Sustainable Agriculture — SDG Indicators.” Un.Org, 2018, unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2016/goal-02/. Accessed 6 May 2019.

Roser, Max, and Hannah Ritchie. “Hunger and Undernourishment.” Our World in Data, 2018, ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment#definitions-of-measures-of-hunger-and-undernourishment. Accessed 7 May 2019.

“The Rise and Fall of the Mayan Empire | Science Mission Directorate.” Nasa.Gov, 2019, science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/15nov_maya. Accessed 7 May 2019.

“Underlying Causes of Malnutrition - Action Against Hunger.” Action Against Hunger, 2017, actionagainsthunger.ca/what-is-acute-malnutrition/underlying-causes-of-malnutrition/. Accessed 8 May 2019.

UNICEF/NYHQ2006-0081/Noorani. Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health Child Development and Early Learning Breastfeeding Nutrition and Growth Immunization With Advice on: Diarrhoea Malaria HIV Child Protection and More Facts for Life Fourth Edition. 2010.

“10 Ways to End Malnutrition.” Global Citizen, 2019, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/10-ways-to-end-malnutrition/. Accessed 6 May 2019