Recipes to end hunger

BRUSSELS—It had the most intriguing title: “Recipes for Ending Hunger.” But it was no cooking show. In fact, it was a brainstorming session during the two-day “eudevdays,” or European Union Development Days, an annual gathering of various sectors to “share, debate, solve and meet” around many issues surrounding the dilemma of development.

This year, the gathering’s theme centered on the international community’s latest commitment, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The theme “Sustainable Development Goals in Action: Our World, Our Dignity, Our Future” summed up the aims underpinning this new drive (replacing last year the Millennium Development Goals) that seeks the commitment of governments to time-bound achievable goals, as well as the hope that real change will take place when the time for reckoning arrives in 2030.

As David Nabarro, advisor on the United Nations’ 2030 agenda, put it, the 17 goals of the SDGs are “a tapestry of interwoven goals.” But Dr. Alaa Murabit, founder of the Voice of Libyan Women and an SDG advisor, summed up the huge challenge that confronts the SDGs’ champions. The goals, she said, “seek to reverse in 15 years hundreds of years of exploitation.”

Equally daunting and brave was the challenge conveyed by the “Recipes for Ending Hunger.” At the venue, four tables were occupied by one resource person each and attendees motivated either by curiosity or concern about the paired issues of hunger and malnutrition worldwide.

Though malnutrition affects the future of children and compromises their health well into adulthood, organizers say that despite the enormity of the problem, less than 1 percent of development assistance has gone to fight malnutrition. For as we at our table realized, “malnutrition is not sexy.” Longstanding, stubborn and seemingly hopeless (it is not), malnutrition has been driven underground, out of public awareness, difficult to diagnose.

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OUR resource person was Dr. Ewald Joseph from Haiti who “discovered” the hidden issue of malnutrition in his trips to remote parts of his impoverished country and realized that “it is more common than is thought.”

The problem is not just lack of food or “the insufficient intake of food,” said Joseph, but also the “poor quality of food” of many families.

In many households in the Philippines, said Nikkin Beronilla, director of policy monitoring and social technology services of the National Anti-Poverty Commission, meals are not truly nutritious. “For instance, we want to ease hunger by eating junk food and drinking soft drinks that do not contain the nutrients that we need.” One problem is that people equate the feeling of “fullness” after a meal with nutrition. But if the food taken consists of “empty calories”—such as carbohydrate-rich and salt-laden instant noodles—one will simply assuage hunger pangs without actually “feeding” the body.

Undernourishment, said Joseph, “impacts persons at all stages of life.” The health of a baby may be compromised by malnutrition even before birth, he said. When a mother is malnourished herself, then her child will most likely suffer from low birth weight and be developmentally compromised by what Joseph called “congenital malformations.” Even a malnourished father “has a role to play in the health of a newborn,” said Joseph, since the lack of micronutrients in his semen deprives his unborn child of protection from malformations.

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A CHILD born to malnourished parents and reared with a chronic lack of quality nutrients is “compromised for life,” said Joseph. “The first thousand days of life are very important,” he notes, and unless interventions are made in a child’s early years, chances are the child will die, succumbing to infections and diseases, or else suffer a lifetime of ailments and developmental problems.

A legislator from Zambia was the one who brought up the need “to make malnutrition sexy,” to call the attention of the public and of officials regarding this problem. But to make an impact on policy, he said, government officials must see for themselves data on the extent of hunger and malnutrition in the country, and “the value of investing in putting an end to malnutrition.”

This made me recall the high-profile campaign to battle malnutrition that was launched during the martial law years under the auspices of then First Lady Imelda Marcos. I can still remember the photos of emaciated youngsters that punctuated coverage of the campaign, as well as the “nutribuns” that were distributed to public school students and disaster relief programs. But the Imeldific eventually lost interest in the issue, and the public was left thinking that the problem had been “solved.”

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THERE is also need, said other participants, to rethink common household myths around food, and “promote diversified diets.”

Working with farmers and women is key, they said, to introduce the production of nutrient-rich nontraditional crops in farms and in “kitchen gardens” even in cities.

One conclusion reached was that “there are no blanket solutions” to hunger and malnutrition. Solutions range across various sectors (agriculture, food distribution, business and food production), and must be tailored to meet local needs and capacities.

Among those behind the workshop was “One,” an advocacy organization founded (and funded) by Bono and other individuals and groups. Its description of its work speaks to what is needed to finally end hunger in our time. Its members “take action day in, day out, organizing, mobilizing, educating and advocating so that people will have the chance, not just to survive, but to thrive.”