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A Decade for Nutrition: What is the global starting point?

On April 1st, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition from 2016 to 2025. This document aims to support the battle against hunger and all forms of malnutrition in the Agenda 2030. This time the goals intend to leave no one behind, unlike their predecessors Millennium Development Goals that aimed to halve the percentage of people living with hunger. A target which was met.

According to the WHO, nearly 800 million people remain chronically undernourished and 159 million children under 5 years of age are stunted. Approximately 50 million children under 5 years are wasted, over two billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. If you would like to understand the different types of undernutrition read more here. Furthermore, 1.9 billion people are affected by overweight, and over 600 million are obese. This, unfortunately, is increasing.

Also on April 1st, the British medical journal The Lancet published the results of the latest global nutrition panorama. Over the past 40 years, according to the study, the rate of obesity has increased 2.6-fold, from 105 million in 1975 to 641 million in 2014. Nearly 13 per cent of the global population is now obese, compared to 9 per cent who are underweight, the study found.

The study suggests that if post-2000 trends continue, the probability of meeting global obesity targets is virtually zero. Rather, if these trends continue, by 2025, global obesity prevalence will reach 18% in men and surpass 21% in women. Unfortunately it was not an April fool’s joke. Is time to start taking obesity and overweight, and most importantly health, seriously.

Paulina Ceballos

Paulina helps Emerging with commercial market outreach, in particular with delegation coordination for trade missions. She is the lead event planner, coordinating the planning and onsite logistics of all sizes of events around the world. Paulina is also involved in Emerging’s online and offline communications, in particular content and community management, branding and marketing activities. Paulina has worked for many national and international media networks covering different events - not only in front of the microphone, but also as advertising sales consultant, media relations, marketing manager and host for official and public events. Her experience in Rome includes working in digital communications for the private sector and as press officer for the United Nations agency International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

A Mexican national, she is fluent in Spanish, English, Italian and Portuguese. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from the Universidad Mexicana and a Laurea Magistrale in Journalism from the Università di Roma Tre. Paulina has been living in Europe for the past 7 years and is currently based in Rome, Italy.

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