Nearly half of the world’s population suffers from poor nutrition, with harmful consequences for health but also for the planet, underlines a report published on Tuesday. According to this annual report entitled “Global nutrition report” (GNR), whose data comes from organizations such as the UN, FAO, WHO or Unicef, 48% of humans currently eat too much or too little. At the current rate, the world will miss eight of the nine nutrition goals set by the World Health Organization for 2025. These include reducing child wasting (when they are too thin for their height) and stunting (when they are too short for their age), as well as adult obesity.
150 million children under five are stunted
The report estimates that nearly 150 million children under the age of five are stunted, more than 45 million are wasted and nearly 40 million overweight. It also reveals that more than 40% of men and women (2.2 billion people) are overweight or obese.
“Avoidable deaths, due to poor diet, have increased by 15% since 2010” to represent today “a quarter of all adult deaths”, the president of the group of independent experts told AFP. from the GNR, Renata Micha. “Our global results show that our diet has not improved over the past decade and now poses a major threat to people’s health and to the planet,” she added.
Not eating enough healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables
According to the report, people are not consuming recommended amounts of health-promoting foods like fruits and vegetables. Not surprisingly, low-income countries have the lowest consumption of these foods. Higher-income countries are those that consume the most foods with harmful effects on health such as red meat, dairy products and sugary drinks and have the highest rates of overweight people.
The GNR further calculated that global food demand generated some 35% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. “Foods of animal origin generally have a higher environmental footprint per product than foods of plant origin. “, says the report. In addition to disrupting food and health systems, the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed around 155 million more people into extreme poverty, the report adds.