This week is Malnutrition Awareness week and it got me thinking about how we need to be more aware of what we and others eat. It was created by a company called BAPEN, who talk about malnutrition and dehydration. Especially in places of care, for example hospitals and care homes. However when I started to research malnutrition I realised there was an equally worrying problem of under nutrition.
What is Malnutrition?
Malnutrition occurs when there is a deficiency of energy, proteins and other nutrients in our body. It causes an adverse effect as our body needs calories and nutrients to survive. If we do not have this our body will eat itself, it will seek nutrition from muscles and organs.
What is Under Nutrition?
Under nutrition is caused by eating low nutrients and processed foods.
What can cause Under Nutrition?
Under Nutrition is becoming an issue especially with children as the unhealthier foods are cheaper. It can be caused by under budgets and poverty, parents cannot always afford the more expensive food. This can also be caused by a lack of time – if parents are working full time, they might not have the time to cook. Therefore, processed convience foods are their easiest option.
The problems…
- Children eating processed foods could be getting illnesses such as allergies, IBS and food intolerances due to lack of vitamins and nutrients.
- The government has guidelines to healthy eating, but only 57% of families are achieving the guidelines. Is the problem that foods can be expensive? We talk about lots of fruit and vegetables and organic free range meat and fish – is that realistic for low income families?
- A lot of people simply do not know how to cook nutritional meals, or even basic meals from scratch.
- There is a gap in the passing on of the skill of cooking of meals. Food programmes do not show the basics, we are creating a generation of super chefs. Yet many don’t know how to cook and are reliant on pre-prepared meals.
- Parents do not want to waste money buying food their family do not want to eat. And if they don’t know how to experiment and cook with those ingredients they rely on ready meals or a very restricted range of products.
- Our children will not develop fully if they are nutrient poor. It affects their concentration, their brain function their learning capacity.
- Childhood diabetes is on the rise as kids are full of sugar, this can also affect their teeth.
The answer…
- If you can buy locally and seasonally, the foods have been produced using soil that has been cared for. The food may be much cheaper too.
- Have a healthy breakfast, give your children a proper breakfast and not anything processed or convenient.
- Help others learn how to cook and how to use the right foods.
- Give the right foods to food banks, tins of salmon and tins of tomatoes would help to create the better balanced meals.
In summary…
Healthier foods are expensive, we do not have much time to cook. However, we all need to take a bit of responsibility for this.
The Childrens right to food campaign talks about food poverty and how to address it.