UNITED NATIONS, United States, June 6, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - More than one in
four children under the age of five globally live in "severe" food poverty,
UNICEF has warned -- meaning more than 180 million are at risk of
experiencing adverse impacts on their growth and development.

"Severe child food poverty describes children who are surviving on severely
deprived diets so they're only consuming two or less food groups," Harriet
Torlesse, a lead writer of a new UNICEF report published late Wednesday, told
AFP.

"It is shocking in this day and age where we know what needs to be done."

UNICEF recommends that young children eat foods daily from five of eight main
groups -- breast milk; grains, roots, tubers and plantains; pulses, nuts and
seeds; dairy; meat, poultry and fish; eggs; vitamin A-rich fruits and
vegetables; and other fruits and vegetables.

But 440 million children under the age of five living in about 100 low- and
middle-income countries are living in food poverty, meaning they do not have
access to five food groups each day.

Of those, 181 million are experiencing severe food poverty, eating from at
most two food groups.

"Children who consume just two food groups per day -- for example, rice and
some milk -- are up to 50 percent more likely to experience severe forms of
malnutrition," UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a statement
accompanying the report.

That malnutrition can lead to emaciation, a state of being abnormally thin
that can be fatal.

And even if these children survive and grow up, "they certainly don't thrive.
So they do less well at school," Torlesse explained.

"When they're adults, they find it harder to earn a decent income, and that
turns the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next," the nutrition
expert said.

"If you think of what a brain looks like and the heart and the immune system,
all these important systems of the body that are so important for
development, for protection against disease -- they all depend on vitamins
and minerals and protein."

- Too much salt, fat, sugar -

Severe child food poverty is concentrated in about 20 countries, with
particularly dire situations in: Somalia, where 63 percent of young children
are affected; Guinea (54 percent); Guinea-Bissau (53 percent) and Afghanistan
(49 percent).

While data is not available for wealthy countries, children in low-income
households there also suffer from nutritional gaps.

The report from the UN Children's Fund notes the current circumstances in the
Gaza Strip, where Israel's military offensive in response to the October 7
attack by Hamas militants "have brought the food and health systems to
collapse."

From December to April this year, the agency collected five rounds of data by
text message from families receiving financial aid in the besieged
Palestinian territory.

It showed that about nine in 10 children were living in severe food poverty.

While the data is not necessarily representative, it indicates what UNICEF
called an "appalling escalation in nutrition deprivation since 2020, when
only 13 percent of children in the Gaza Strip were living in severe child
food poverty."

Worldwide, the agency noted "slow progress over the past decade" in
addressing the crisis, and called for better social services and humanitarian
aid for the most vulnerable children.

It also called for a rethink of the global food processing system, saying
that sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods were being "aggressively
marketed to parents and families and are the new normal for feeding
children."

Torlesse explained: "These foods are cheap but they're also very high in
calories. They're high-energy, high salt, high fat. So they'll fill stomachs
and they'll remove hunger, but they won't provide the vitamins and minerals
that children need."

Sugary and salty foods -- which children quickly develop a taste for, a habit
they can take into adulthood -- also contribute to the development of
obesity.