Читать книгу The Road to Good Nutrition - Группа авторов - Страница 115

In the past half-century, the world has become increasingly aware of the challenges and threats to food security. This heightened awareness has been prompted by a range of well publicized humanitarian disasters and food price crises on the one hand and the burgeoning growth of the world’s population and the changes in its dietary patterns on the other. Development organizations are increasingly concerned about food security and have focused their efforts on helping those who are not able to feed themselves sufficiently and adequately. Over the course of decades, these bodies have received the support of governments, private foundations and United Nations organizations. Many of their efforts have focused on provisioning food in situations of crisis or emergency, and increasingly on providing cash or food for development. Securing an adequate supply of food, however, is by no means the same thing as securing adequate nutrition. Investments in agricultural productivity and yields, for example, are not guaranteed to improve nutrition or health if they do not improve the poor’s access both to enough calories and to high-quality diets rich in essential nutrients. Even improving access to more and better food may be insufficient to prevent or reduce the persistently high rates of malnutrition found in the developing world if children are suffering from repeated episodes of diarrhea or other infections.