Nutrition assignment (how to reduce malnutrition in

ethiopia)

Prevention

To prevent malnutrition, people need to consume a range

of nutrients from a variety of food types. There should be
a balanced intake of carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins,
and minerals, as well as plenty of fluids, and especially
water.

The best way to prevent malnutrition is to eat a healthy,

balanced diet.
A healthy, balanced diet is vital for maintaining health
and fitness.
To improve your loved one's nutrition, try some of the
following:
1. Encourage healthier food choices. ...
2. Snacking on healthy foods is a good way to get extra
nutrients and calories between meals. ...
3. Make food taste good again. ...
4. Consider adding supplements to your loved one's diet. ...
5. Encourage exercise. ...
6. Plan social activities.
Dec 1, 2010
 Encourage healthier food choices. The best foods are
those that are full of nutrients, such as fruits,
vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats. Help your
loved one limit his or her intake of solid fats, sugars,
alcoholic beverages, and salt. Suggest ways to replace
less healthy foods with healthier choices.
 Snacking on healthy foods is a good way to get extra
nutrients and calories between meals. It may be
especially helpful for older adults who quickly get full
at mealtimes.
 Make food taste good again. If your loved one is on a
restricted diet, herbs and spices can help restore flavor
to bland foods. Just remember to avoid herb or spice
blends that are heavy in salt.
 Consider adding supplements to your loved one’s
diet. He or she may benefit from a supplement shake
or other nutritional supplements. Talk to their doctor
about these options.
 Encourage exercise. Even a little bit of exercise can
help improve your loved one’s appetite and keep his or
her bones and muscles strong.
 Plan social activities. Make mealtimes and exercise a
social activity. Take your loved one on a walk around
the block. Encourage him or her to meet a neighbor or
friend for lunch. Many restaurants offer discounts for
seniors.
 Here we discuss four approaches, all of which will be

needed for malnutrition to significantly decline:

 the scaling up of successful and cost-effective direct

interventions
 ; prioritisation of the first 1,000 day window in a

child’s existence
 ; the development of food systems that deliver

enough healthy food and prioritise human health; and

 coordination and collaboration across government
sectors to put nutrition at the heart of relevant
policies and programmes.

 Scale-up direct interventions where they work

 Nutrition, while impacted by agricultural
productivity, poverty and income, is unlikely to be
improved through more general programmes aimed
at bringing about economic and social development.
Income growth alone will not reduce rates of
malnutrition, and so we need direct interventions to
tackle malnutrition. Things such as vitamin, mineral
and micronutrient supplementation; delayed cord
 clamping after birth, kangaroo mother care, early
initiation of breastfeeding, promotion of dietary
diversity, fortifying staple foods, cash transfer
programmes, community-based nutrition education,
and school feeding programmes.
 Although many cost-effective nutrition interventions
have been tried and tested, and shown to reduce the
physical signs of malnutrition such as stunting and
wasting in children, knowing which interventions
will work where and should be scaled up is complex.
Different factors matter in different countries, for
example when investigating childhood nutrition
outcomes in East Africa maternal health was found to
be the most important factor in reducing malnutrition
in Uganda and Rwanda but not for other countries. In
a World Bank review of 46 nutrition impact
evaluations published since 2000, each assessing the
effect of a range of nutrition interventions, many
interventions were found to have a positive effect but
not consistently across all programmes and
indicators. One intervention may have worked well in
one place but not in another. Local context such as
the age of the target group, length of intervention and
methodologies used caused significant disparity in
the results. As the review states “we should not be
asking simply ‘What works?’ but rather ‘Under what
conditions does it work, for whom, what part of the
intervention works, and for how much?’” We now
 need to go beyond the idea of one-size-fits-all
nutrition interventions while learning from successful
nutrition interventions.

 Prioritise the 1000 day window

 In early age, malnutrition can have largely
irreversible negative impacts on physical and
cognitive development, education, future earning and
mortality. Some 165 million children who survive
early malnutrition experience stunted growth and
impaired metal capacity. Maternal undernutrition is
estimated to contribute to some 800,000 neonatal
deaths each year and stunting, wasting and
micronutrient deficiencies are believed to contribute
to almost 3.1 million deaths annually. As such it is
critical that interventions are directed to the first
1,000 days of a child’s existence, from conception to
2 years old, if the long-term problems associated with
childhood malnutrition are to be addressed. Without
tackling undernutrition in these 1,000 days the cycle
of undernourished mothers birthing undernourished
children will be difficult to break.
 Medical studies have found that interventions during
gestation and in the first two years of life can prevent
child malnutrition and its effects, and investments
during this period are likely to have the greatest value
in reducing malnutrition. Bhutta et al
(2013) modelled the effects a range of interventions
 in the 34 countries that contain 90% of the world’s
children with stunted growth. They found that current
total deaths in children under five can be reduced by
15% if 10 evidence-based nutrition interventions are
implemented at 90% coverage. The cost of doing so
in these 34 countries is calculated as $9.6 billion per
year. But the study also stresses the importance of
nutrition-sensitive approaches in such areas as
education, agriculture, female empowerment and
social protection.

Develop healthier food systems

 Food systems began changing in the mid-
20th century but modern systems no longer meet the
needs of nutritious, healthy and sustainable diets. The
modern food system emerged from government
policies addressing the need to increase calories and
protein in diets by focusing on intensifying
production of key commodities (e.g. maize, soy, and
livestock) after World War II. What followed from
this were policies to encourage globalisation,
increased control of the food system by private
businesses, and vertical integration in food chains.
Although designed to enhance global food security
and availability, it developed without consideration
for its impact on providing healthy diets. As such a
 system well-equipped to transport large amounts of
highly-processed and treated foods around the world
is also well suited to supporting the excessive intake
of refined carbohydrates, sodium, sugar and saturated
fat.
 The modernisation of food systems, which is
occurring rapidly in many low- and middle-income
countries, is facilitating the consumption of more
packaged, processed foods with added sugar and salt,
greater consumption of meat, increase incidence of
snacking and reduced consumption of whole foods.
Although countries differ in the characteristics of
their “nutrition transition”, in general there is a trade-
off between being able to access more food but that
food being less nutritious. Indeed it was found that
increased food supplies globally have resulted in
significant reductions in malnutrition since the 1970s.
 But what would a healthy and sustainable food
system look like? Being made up of the environment,
people, institutions and processes by which
agricultural products are produced, processed and
brought to consumers. As well as food prices,
consumer knowledge and markets, there are a lot of
factors which all need to be working towards
delivering healthy, nutritious and safe foods.
Unfortunately a single model will not work
everywhere but building in socioeconomic and
environmental feedbacks, making the processes
 transparent and the actors accountable, and utilising a
diversity of food systems to support resilience,
should one fail, are some of the principles to apply.

Coordinate across governmental sectors

 Direct nutrition interventions are undoubtedly
important but so too are agricultural production,
diversity and sustainability as well as non-food
factors such as health services, women’s education
and access to water. A vast number of factors
contribute to a population’s nutrition status, although
their relative importance may differ by geographic
area and food availability. As such government
sectors such as agriculture, health, environment,
education and the economy in general must be on the
same page and committed when it comes to tackling
nutrition. Reductions in childhood stunting in Peru,
from a rate of 29.8% in 2005 to 18.1% in 2011, have
been attributed to improved policy and institutional
coordination, pooled funding for nutrition and
binding nutrition targets, as well as the creation of a
civil society platform, the Child Malnutrition
Initiative. Policy change after 2006, which saw a
reduction in the number of nutrition stakeholders and
the creation of common policy goals and agreements,
as well as a firm and public commitment from the
 Peruvian government to reduce chronic malnutrition
in children under five by 5 percent in 5 years, along
with direct nutrition interventions and efforts to
reduce poverty enable Peru to reach this goal.
 The Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index
(HANCI) ranks governments on their political
commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition.
Latest results sees 11 of the last 15 (those countries
whose governments are the least committed to
tackling hunger and undernutrition) are in Africa.
Peru has overtaken Guatemala and tops the rankings
and is in fact making a clear effort in the fight against
hunger and undernutrition, although the country still
has high stunting rates in rural areas. The 2014
HANCI report, released in September 2015, finds
that commitment to addressing undernutrition falls
short of the commitment to ending hunger and that
despite a greater focus on nutrition in the SDGs, it is
still insufficient to tackle undernutrition.
 So we know that we need better access to nutritious
foods, safe water and sanitation, quality healthcare,
poverty reduction, social protection and women’s
education and empowerment. We know that there are
a variety of direct, indirect, systemic and political
changes that can improve nutrition. But knowing
broadly what is needed is only a very small part of
the battle. Nutrition is multi-scale, multi-sector, and
location-specific. We really need for global
objectives and policy such as the SDGs to promote
the goal of ending malnutrition effectively and then
we need countries to follow Peru’s lead in
committing to this goal. What is clear is that
significantly reducing rates of malnutrition in
developing countries is both achievable and scalable.