Nutrition Information Resources

The May edition of the Advances in Nutrition Journal has a Supplement on "White Vegetables: A Forgotten Source of Nutrients".  It is interesting in that it looks at food components (phytochemicals) and nutrients, reminding us that there is more to life (and sight) than beta carotene....

To read the paper, please click on the link below.
 

Save the Children launched the 14th annual State of the World's Mothers Report. Every year, this flagship report shines a light on the most challenging issues facing mothers and children and includes the Mother's Index which shows where mothers and children fare best and where they face the greatest risk of mortality.

This year's report focuses on the critical first day of life. More than 1 million babies die on the day they are born- making the birth day the most dangerous day for babies in nearly every country, rich and poor alike.

The report highlights approaches that are working to bring essential health care to the hard-to-reach places where most deaths occur. And it shows how millions more lives can be saved each year if we invest in proven solutions and help mothers do what's best for their children.

Finally, the report concludes with calling political leaders to take national and international action to step up efforts to tackle newborn, child and maternal mortality through:

• Strengthening health systems so mothers have greater access to skilled birth attendants;
• Fighting the underlying causes of newborn mortality, especially gender inequality and malnutrition;
• Investing in low-cost solutions that can dramatically reduce newborn mortality;
• Increasing commitments and funding to save the lives of mothers and newborns;

The Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) ranks governments on their political commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition. The index was created to provide greater transparency and public accountability by measuring what governments achieve, and where they fail, in addressing hunger and undernutrition.
 
HANCI compares 45 developing countries for their performance on 22 indicators of political commitment. These are split between two sub-indices - one for hunger and one for undernutrition and grouped in each under three areas of government action:
• Legal frameworks (for example the level of constitutional protection of the right to food)
• Public expenditures (for example the percentage of government budgets spent on agriculture)
• Policies and programmes (for example the extent to which nutrition features in national development policies/strategies)

For more information, please visit their website here or see the full HANCI 2012 report in-depth analysis here.

Wijnkoop et al., (2013) state ‘nutrition economics is crucial for the generation of policy-relevant evidence and informed policy decision making to enhance nutrition choices.' The next question which is being raised by the authors is ‘does evidence of cost-effectiveness influence policy and practice?' Unfortunately cost-effectiveness was not found to influence the level of funding. Nutrition economics is however a crucial partner in order to achieve better nutrition at the population level and translating a healthy diet into policy.

The authors put emphasis on the importance of translating the impact of nutrition on health. They acknowledge there are ‘methodological challenges and uncertainties associated with nutrition interventions to improve health of the next generation, including aspects such as affordability, equity, ethical concerns and political feasibility, need to be addressed.'

In order to read the full text article, please see the attachment below.

"Economic growth is necessary but not sufficient to accelerate reduction of hunger and malnutrition". This is the new key message of the FAO "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 ".

The State of Food Insecurity in the World raises awareness about global hunger issues, discusses underlying causes of hunger and malnutrition and monitors progress towards hunger reduction targets established at the 1996 World Food Summit and the Millennium Summit. The publication is targeted at a wide audience, including policy-makers, international organizations, academic institutions and the general public with a general interest in linkages between food security, and human and economic development.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 is published jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme.

For more information, please contact: mailto:sofi@fao.org or visit the website.

You can download the report by clicking here.

For more details on the The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, please click on the link below