During the month of December, I am going to focus on the problem of hunger in America, particularly childhood hunger. Although it may appear unrelated to the main topic of this blog, it actually is not. Whether it is because of over-abundance of food or because of hunger, poor childhood nutrition is a common concern. In both cases, our children face a future of poor health, lost opportunities and unrealized dreams.

Here are some facts about hunger based on 2008 data that may surprise you:

1. There were 17.2 million households that faced food insecurity. This means that they had trouble providing food to all family members sometime during the year.
2. About  6.7 million were characterized as facing very low food security.
3. Over half of the food insecure households were white, non-Hispanic.
4. Hunger is a problem even for those who may not be homeless or out of work. 36% of individuals served by Feeding America network of food banks have at least one working adult in the household.
5. Over 1 million children live in households with very low food security. Although children are generally shielded from these problems, there were over half million households where both children and adults experienced very low food security.

Sources:

USDA report on Household Food Security in 2008
Share Our Strength Hunger Facts
Feeding America Hunger 101

I cannot believe that over a billion people worldwide are undernourished in the 21st century! Do we call this progress?

Right to food is a universally accepted fundamental right. Not only is this crisis a moral problem for the rest of the world, I believe it is also a security problem. Extreme poverty and hunger are breeding grounds for the spread of fundamentalism.

October 16, 2009 was the World Food Day sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The theme for the 64th anniversary of the World Food Day this year was Achieving food security in the time of crisis. Here are a few sobering statistics:

• Over 1 billion people worldwide are hungry and undernourished for the first time in history. That is nearly 1 in every 6 people in the world
• About a 100 million more people were added to the roster of the hungry this year compared to last year
• The declining trend in the proportion of undernourished in developing countries was reversed in 2008 and 2009
• Nearly 90% of the world’s hungry live in the Asia-Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa

Certainly, the current global economic crisis has made things worse for everyone. But those in the low income countries and developing countries are disproportionately affected. There are a lot of smart people looking at the problem of food insecurity from an economic and resource point of view. However, we as individuals can take this opportunity as a reminder to reflect upon our relationship with food:

• Do we eat to live or live to eat?
• Do we know where our food comes from?
• Do we know if most of what we eat can even be called food?
• Do we know if the food we consume is produced in a sustainable way?
• Do we know about the waste and spoilage from farm to the fork?

Food is the fuel we need for life. Yet the only time we think about it is when our grocery bill goes up and we have to make tough choices. We are fortunate to be living in the land of plenty. Most Americans spend very little on food as a percentage of their total income. Still, we feel the pinch when price of bread and milk goes up by a small amount.

Many others in the world have no such luck. Some even spend their entire daily income on getting a few bites to eat.

We can send them our dollars in aid. But unless we examine our relationship with food in a fundamental way, we cannot hope to solve this problem anytime soon.

Now that is some food for thought.

©2009 Littlestomaks.com

It is great to see orange everywhere in the neighborhood these days! Some people have already put up their Halloween decorations. We don’t get to enjoy the Fall colors as much in Florida. So these decorations – along with the cool evening air – remind us of the changing season. It is great to be outdoors these days!

It seemed like a busy week for nutrition related news. Probably because I discovered a great website which aggregates news from different sources and organizes them in different categories. It is called Alltop and it is created by none other than the Marketing Guru Guy Kawasaki. I was delighted to see my blog listed on Alltop’s Top Nutrition News page. Check it out!

Here are the 5 nutrition related news that caught my eye this week. Enjoy and drop me a comment to share your thoughts.

Watch out, eating hamburgers can paralyze you

I was shocked beyond belief to read the unfortunate story of 22 years old Stephanie Smith, who got really sick after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli. She was so sick that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks, after which she could no longer walk because she was paralyzed from the waist down. A very heavy price to pay for a cheap hamburger all of us assume safe for eating without much thought.

Turns out there are serious gaps in the food inspection system which is supposed to test packaged meat for E. coli contamination. Ground beef is produced by processors from beef trimmings and other parts which they buy from many different suppliers. Not all of these incoming supplies are tested for contamination before grinding. The result is that  contaminated cow parts can sometime enter the ground beef supply undetected. Does not happen very frequently, but it does happen often enough to make the news. 8000 people have become sick from 16 E. coli outbreaks in the last 3 years.

No matter how many regulations and inspections are put in place, there is no way to be 100% safe because of the way meat is processed in modern plants. My advice – cut down on beef in the first place – it has been shown to increase the risk of various types of cancer. And if you do want to enjoy a burger, make sure you follow the safe handling procedures and cook it thoroughly so that the inside of the hamburger reaches 165 °F.

Food insecurity increases the risk of childhood obesity

Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? Food insecurity is defined as lack of access to food, or nutritionally adequate food. So it is surprising that new research from the American Dietetic Association concludes that there is a link between food insecurity and childhood obesity. In particular, girls from households facing food insecurity are more likely to be overweight or obese. Girls 2-5 years old from household with food insecurity were 47% more likely to be overweight compared to those from food secure households. Boys of the same age did not show this correlation.

What could be the cause of this? Researchers are not sure yet, but suggests that food insecurity creates stress which affects behavior including food choices. Add to that the availability of cheap, energy dense, nutrient-poor foods and binge eating and you can see why this could happen.

I believe that hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin. In poor countries, food insecurity is real and energy-dense foods are not affordable. There you see severe malnutrition and low weights. In developed countries, food insecurity causes malnutrition on the other end – that is energy dense foods leading to overweight and obesity. The common factors are distribution, quality and cost of food. This is where organizations like Share Our Strength are so critical. I have supported them by writing blog posts and will continue to do so in future.

Soy isoflavones reduce risk of diabetes and heart disease

I was quite excited to read about new research from UMass (my alma mater!) which attempts to explain how isoflavones from soy rich foods work with fat cells to regulate glucose uptake and increased insulin sensitivity. This mechanism is similar to how anti-diabetic drugs work in the body. This is a very important discovery because soy rich foods have been known to lower diabetes risk, increase insulin sensitivity and reduce cardiovascular disease risk, but the cellular mechanism was not well understood.

Isoflavones are plant-based antioxidants found almost exclusively in beans such as soybeans. They are also known as polyphenols because of their chemical structure. Many of these isoflavones act as dietary estrogens. Some studies have shown a reduced risk of breast cancer especially if the soy-rich diet is given in early childhood.

Although much research still remains to be done, particularly in humans, these results are quite promising.

Michael Pollan considers rules to eat by

What are your rules of thumb that affect your food choices? Do you follow the advice of your Mom or Grandma, or do you make these choices by nutritional labels, diet trends or advertisements? Michael Pollan, the highly acclaimed author of The Omnivores Dilemma is compiling genuinely useful, nutritionally sound examples of popular wisdom about eating via the Well blog on the New York Times. He is writing  a book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual based on these responses due to be published in January.

Pollan is known for his skepticism about modern nutrition science and food marketing claims. At the core, he believes that how we eat has been, and should be, influenced by culture based on our collective wisdom accumulated over generations. In short, have more faith in what your Mama told you and skip the advice based on nutrition science.

I have a little bit of a problem with this. What is culture? How do we know that the wisdom of culture is still relevant today? I agree, that culture strongly drives our behavior, but culture is constantly changing. More so than ever now because we live in the age of the Internet. I say, listen to your Mama, but also learn the science so you can make your own decisions. If you leave the decision making to others, even if they are scientists, you are really giving up responsibility for your own health. Science and culture are not mutually exclusive; use the power of information to make your own decisions. I would love to hear Michael’s thoughts on this.

What do you think? What are your favorite rules?

Preservative-free doesn’t make salty processed foods any healthier

Annie of PhD In Parenting wrote a very nice post this week about how Nestle responded to her question on high sodium content in Stouffer’s frozen foods. This was precipitated by Nestle’s claim on Twitter that Stouffer’s meals contained no preservatives.

The No Preservative claim on processed foods is getting quite common these days because customers are getting more sensitive to chemical additives in foods. What they don’t realize is that just because a certain processed food claims to contain no preservatives, it doesn’t mean that it is healthy for them. Most of them still contain loads of salt, fat and sugar.

Nestle’s response to Annie’s question based on their expert opinion is quite ridiculous! They want you to control your toddler’s salt intake by managing the portion size – that is don’t give the adult size serving to your toddler! As if your child is a robot that you can dial in a serving size to manage their salt intake. The right thing to do is to reduce the sodium content in the food.

Instead of hiding behind the numbers in their so called “expert” response, I would have liked to see them take ownership of the sodium problem and announce specific goals to reduce them to a certain level in their products ahead of regulations. That would have shown true leadership and concern for the consumer.

What do you think?

Photo source -Barbara L. Hanson on Flickr via everystockphoto
©2009 Littlestomaks.com