Nutrition is the foundation of our future. Do you think being well-fed is only about having a full stomach? It’s not. Being well-fed is about having enough of the right stuff — safe and nutritious food — and not too much of the wrong stuff — food that is processed beyond recognition and stuffed full of trans fat, additives, salt, and sugars.
Around 820 million people are hungry. But around 3 billion are malnourished because the calories they get are empty of other good things such as vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fiber. Getting this right in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from conception until they reach 2 years of age, is paramount for setting off on pathways to a good life. Children who are well nourished at age 2 do better in school, are more likely to thrive mentally and physically, develop stronger livelihoods, and age healthily — avoiding diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure.
In the last 20 years, inadequate diets have become the leading factor in disease and premature mortality in every country on the planet. In 2022, nearly 150 million young children under 5 were suffering from stunting. Stunting is the straitjacket that holds back the development of brains, muscles, bones, and immune systems. Also in 2022, 45 million young children suffered from wasting. These children are literally skin and bone and are at high risk of imminent death. And for the 37 million young children who are overweight, they are a ticking time bomb for heart attacks, cancers, and strokes.
Some may argue that investing in nutrition is a risky business simply because they see no clear pipeline of offerings that would generate a reasonable internal rate of return. Yet, evidence proves that scaling up action and finance for nutrition is highly rewarding: £1 invested in nutrition generates £16 in wealth, according to the 2014 Global Nutrition Report. In many countries, this average investment benefit-cost ratio is much higher. In Nigeria it is 27, in India 34, Indonesia 48, and in South Africa it is an incredible 53. These ratios far outweigh the performance of the Dow Jones Index over the past 100 years. Nutrition is the “super-investment” that keeps on giving for people, society, and the planet.
We are now at a key moment, with five years left to rapidly accelerate progress toward the U.N. Sustainable Development Agenda’s target of ending malnutrition by 2030. Some progress is being made, but it is much too slow.
The world’s multiple crises — the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, conflicts, and low economic growth — have turned the clock back on the progress already achieved, with populations ever less resilient to current and future crises. Women in particular bear the heaviest burden of malnutrition, mostly for social and societal reasons: They usually eat last and least. It is no surprise that in today’s world, half a billion women between 15 and 49 years of age suffer from anemia, but it is a scandal.
Making safe and nutritious diets more available also represents smart climate action as it tends to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduce food losses. It is not just humans that thrive from better nutrition — the planet does too.
If we don’t get nutrition right early on in life, we essentially build our societies on quicksand, with predictable and disastrous consequences.
GAIN believes nutrition is a nonnegotiable pillar of development: Something that is so obvious it is not even questioned, as obvious as sending a child to school. It is the ‘super-investment’ that keeps on giving for people, society, and the planet.