Читать книгу The Road to Good Nutrition - Группа авторов - Страница 103

The prevention of undernutrition, or stunting, should start early in life, with interventions among at-risk populations that ensure that pregnant and lactating mothers are adequately nourished, that children receive exclusive breastfeeding during the first 6 months of life, and provision of adequate complementary feeding in addition to breastfeeding for children aged 6-23 months. Ensuring that pregnant women are adequately nourished may require intervening before pregnancy, i.e., during adolescence and before a next pregnancy, also because the impact of undernutrition already starts at conception.

The ultimate aim of interventions to prevent stunting should be that nutrient requirements of the individual child, also during life in utero, are met and that illness is prevented.

An individual needs approximately 40 different nutrients, in different amounts, in order to grow, develop and remain healthy. Meeting these requirements requires consumption of an adequately diverse diet, including breast milk, and a variety of plant-source foods (vegetables, fruits, staples), animal-source foods (dairy, eggs, fish, meat) as well as fortified foods. Where such a variety of foods is not available, or for those who (usually for economic reasons) cannot access such a variety, specially formulated foods may be required that fill the so-called ‘nutrient gap’. These may need to be made available at lower than normal or no cost.

A home-fortification approach, where a small amount of a powder or lipid-based spread (<20 g, <100 kcal/d) is added to home-prepared foods, which adds vitamins, minerals and some other essential nutrients that are unlikely to be available in adequate amounts in the prevailing diet, is a promising strategy for preventing stunting, because it hardly changes the local diet and food practices. Another good option, which may be more familiar to families, is the introduction of specially formulated complementary foods, such as infant porridges that have a good content of essential nutrients.

Tanzanian campaigner Frank shares his experience of hunger with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the Nutrition for Growth Summit

Source: Simon Davis/Department for International Development

Status: June 2013. Please see the SUN website for more recent updates.