{"id":212124,"date":"2022-10-28T20:43:48","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T15:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=212124"},"modified":"2022-10-28T20:43:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T15:13:48","slug":"why-we-need-to-focus-on-nutrition-not-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/why-we-need-to-focus-on-nutrition-not-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we need to focus on nutrition, not hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article\u00a0\u201c<strong>Why we need to focus on nutrition, not hunger<\/strong>\u201d\u00a0published in\u00a0<strong>The Indian Express <\/strong>on\u00a0<strong>28<sup>th<\/sup> October 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Social Justice <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance:\u00a0<\/strong>concerns associated with GHI 2002 ranking of India<\/p>\n<p><strong>News<\/strong>: The Global Hunger Index of 2022 has lowered India\u2019s ranking to 107 out of 121 from 101 out of 116 countries in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>This has placed India below all South Asian countries except Afghanistan and also below several poor African countries such as Rwanda, Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/explainspeaking-reading-global-hunger-index-and-indian-govts-response\/\"><strong>What is Global Hunger Index<\/strong><\/a><strong>? <\/strong><\/p>\n<h5><strong>What are the problems with hunger calculation of GHI?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The Global Hunger Index can be viewed <strong>at the level of theory, at the level of methodology, and at the level of Indian peculiarities.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Theory:<\/strong> GHI sees hunger as a food production challenge whereas according to FAO, India is the <strong>world\u2019s largest producer and consumer<\/strong> of grain and the largest producer of milk with the increase in the per capita intake.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>India has improved so much in its food production that it offered recently to supply food to the world if permitted by WTO.<\/li>\n<li>Further, <strong>Amartya Sen<\/strong> has said that the reasons behind poverty and hunger is not the food availability issues but it is the <strong>improper food distribution<\/strong>. He further said that India is unable to use its resources properly to fight poverty and hunger.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Therefore, putting India at 107<sup>th<\/sup> position in GHI 2022 and clubbing it with countries facing serious food shortages is unacceptable.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Methodology:<\/strong> There is also concern in the methodology of calculating GHI as the methods used by GHI calculations are about 20 years old.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>GHI uses <strong>caloric consumption<\/strong> in calculating GHI but measures of hunger and poverty are moving away from caloric consumption to nutrition.<\/li>\n<li>Further, its methodology to calculate hunger is not accurate as it focuses disproportionately on children less than five-year-old.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Indian peculiarities:<\/strong> Indians are mostly vegetarians whereas countries around the world are mostly non-vegetarians.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Therefore, <strong>child wasting and stunting<\/strong> in India can possibly because of imbalanced vegetarian diets and animal protein deficiencies rather than energy deficits.<\/li>\n<li>This shows that comparing India with other countries in the world is not proper.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, it is a well-established fact that nutrition, especially child nutrition is a problem in India and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) provides a better picture of health and nutrition in India.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/national-family-health-nfhs\/\"><strong>What is the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)<\/strong><\/a><strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n<h5><strong>What are the causes of malnutrition amongst children in India?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><strong>Breastfeeding:<\/strong> It is one of the biggest challenges in India as children are not properly breastfed. Breastfeeding helps the child in <strong>acquiring antibodies<\/strong> against infections, allergies and protection against several chronic conditions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>WHO and UNICEF<\/strong> recommend that breastfeeding should be initiated within the first hour of birth and infants should be breastfed for the <strong>first six months.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>According to <strong>NFHS 5<\/strong>, there has a been significant <strong>improvement<\/strong> in the breastfeeding of the children. The percentage of children breastfed rose from 55 per cent in NFHS 4 to 64 per cent in NFHS 5.<\/li>\n<li>NFHS also highlights that only 42 per cent of infants are breastfed within one hour of birth.<\/li>\n<li>States such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh have seen above 70 per cent breastfeeding whereas Bihar, Punjab, Kerala are <strong>below 50 per cent.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Post-Breastfeeding:<\/strong> There are concerns that children being breastfed for the first six months after the birth continue to be breastfed even after six months without access to nutritional foods.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>NFHS 5<\/strong> shows that the improvement has been marginal over the last two reports and states like Maharashtra and Gujarat are way behind.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Unhygienic practices and Lack of awareness:<\/strong> According to an NGO, unhygienic practices followed at the homes are also one of the reasons behind chronic infections and malnutrition.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Children eat unhygienic and less nutritious foods and there is also lack of awareness amongst the mothers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Outcome of Poor nutrition:<\/strong> Poor nutrition in children leads to various diseases and problems such as stunting, wasting, anaemia and low weight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The post is based on an article\u00a0\u201cWhy we need to focus on nutrition, not hunger\u201d\u00a0published in\u00a0The Indian Express on\u00a028th October 2022. Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Social Justice Relevance:\u00a0concerns associated with GHI 2002 ranking of India News: The Global Hunger Index of 2022 has lowered India\u2019s ranking to 107 out of 121 from 101 out&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/why-we-need-to-focus-on-nutrition-not-hunger\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why we need to focus on nutrition, not hunger<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10500],"class_list":["post-212124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-indian-express","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704916065},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}