Even as fruit and vegetables remain prohibitively expensive in many countries, “public support for cereals and sugar, combined with private marketing and clever packaging, is encouraging a transition to unhealthy diets in low and middle-income countries.”
An opinion piece released by the World Bank under its World Bank Blogs is asserting that the fact that the onset of the coronavirus has caught several countries with their nutritional guard ‘down’ may not only result in higher mortality rates than would otherwise have been the case but is also likely to make the ‘burden’ of treating victims back to health considerably more onerous.
The May 13 article, authored by Bank officials Muhammad Ali Pate and Martien van Nieuwkoop, who serve as Directors of Health, Nutrition and Population and Agriculture and Food, respectively, assert that the pandemic has raised the stakes for consumers, producers and policy makers globally, on account of the fact that the long-entrenched and widespread habit of unhealthy diets are contributing to preexisting conditions that put many people more at risk. What compounds the problem, the authors of the article assert, is that “illness also means loss of income.”
The authors contend, further, that diet-related existing illnesses in COVID-19 victims could be placing greater strain on care and treatment institutions since people with pre-existing, diet-related conditions such as “severe obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, are suffering more serious consequences from COVID-19, including more severe illness and a greater need for intensive health care, such as respirators.”
And the article predicts that given the current state of affairs, global inequality on food and nutrition is about to get much worse. It notes that setting aside the fact that the World Food Programme has warned of “a potential doubling of acute food insecurity in low- and middle-income countries this year due to income and remittance losses” experience from 2008 also points to a wider “impending nutrition crisis.”
The authors assert that setting aside the substantive illness and fatalities resulting directly from COVID-19, the pandemic also puts the state of health of countries at risk on account of “disrupted health and nutrition services, job and income losses, disruptions in local food supply chains, and as a direct result of infections among poor and vulnerable people.” There is, as well, “evidence that the sale of snacks and non-perishable foods is growing rapidly in the crisis, at the expense of fresh foods, such as vegetables and fruits, and high protein foods, such as legumes, fish and meat”… with junk food manufacturers seeing the crisis “as an opportunity to expand their market share”.
And against the backdrop of the twin scourges of widespread malnutrition challenges and the current onset of the coronavirus, the article recommends that countries place higher priority on adopting “policies that secure food at affordable prices for the most vulnerable.” It notes that various international organizations including the FAO, IFAD, World Bank and World Food Programme have joined with agriculture ministers from countries around the world including Latin America and the Caribbean and are calling on food-exporting countries to steer clear of “trade disruptions and keep food and agricultural inputs flowing across borders.” These initiatives, it adds, “must be complemented by steps to keep domestic food production, processing, and marketing functional and safe, despite social distancing and movement restrictions.”
The prevailing circumstances also point to the need to “go beyond high-calorie staples and ensure better nutrition to boost people’s resilience and lower their risks from pre-existing, diet-related conditions and foodborne illnesses. On the agricultural side, this may take many forms, from promoting kitchen gardens, growing bio-fortified crops, and diversifying food produced for domestic consumption, to improving cold chains for more perishable nutritious food, upgrading fresh food markets, and investing in food safety.”
