Malnutrition for Kids

Mutya Dancel

General Nutrition

Sarah Gaete

November 29 2017

Malnutrition for kids

Malnutrition is defined as a lack of proper nutrition, because of not having enough to eat or not eating enough of the right things, or being unable to use food that one does eat. Although malnutrition affects many adult life’s, but in many country, the most affective in malnutrition are kids in their early childhood because of nutrient deficiencies, growth failure, and poverty. This problem strikes kids in their early ages and continues until it become a disease and many get sick most of the time because of this problem. As research show “Undernutrition puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections, and contributes to delayed recovery.” (UNICEF) This explains why most kids get sick without the knowledge of their parents that they are insufficient of nutrients in their body.

        Nutrient deficiencies into a child that’s growing up is hard to figure out until they get a checkup. a child could look skinny or chubby but inside their body they are missing some nutrients. Even a child that eats a lot of vegetables can consider to be have malnutrition, or a child that attend activities in school can be under malnutrition. A child body functions begin to fail and signs of deficiency diseases become apparent these problems can result from under nutrient deficiencies and include birth defects, learning disabilities, impaired immunity, or can be premature birth. Most likely the nutrient’s that a child is missing are iodine, iron, vitamin A, and zinc.” Iodine deficiency affects one out of seven, resulting in stillbirths and irreversible mental retardation (cretinism) in 40 million newborns every year. More than 100 million children (younger than age 5) suffer from symptoms of vitamin A deficiency—blindness, growth retardation, and poor resistance to common childhood infections such as measles.” (Bhutta) This consequence of nutrient deficiencies is bad for this young mind kids that barely starting their life into this world. which why parents should be aware of what are they giving their kids and what they eat or take while pregnant.

        Growth failure is the cause of malnutrition because “Nearly one in four children in the developing world is severely underweight by the age of 5. These underweight children are malnourished and readily develop the diseases of poverty: parasitic and infectious diseases that cause diarrhea (dysentery and cholera), acute respiratory illnesses (pneumonia and whooping cough), measles, and malaria.” (Khambalia) Kids who experienced growth failure is not a good image for other child because today most of the kids that attends school get bullied all the time with their peers in school. Being bullied because of their physical image whether their fat or skinny, which makes kids lost their self-confidence and lost their stamina. Its also a result why a kid would go on diet and starved their self because they been called fat in school or a kid would start eating a lot of junk food because they are being called skinny in school. These problems caused their growth failure and not able to continue their body and mind because of this reason they experienced in their young age.

        Today, poverty is still around the world and the reason why malnutrition has caused all of people suffer from underweight. Poverty is the principal cause of hunger. “The causes of poverty include poor people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself. As of 2008 (2004 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 982 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1 a day or less. This compares to the FAO estimate of 850 million undernourished people. Extreme poverty remains an alarming problem in the world's developing regions, despite the advances made in the 1990s till now, which reduced "dollar a day" poverty from (an estimated) 1.23 billion people to 982 million in 2004, a reduction of 20 percent over the period. Progress in poverty reduction has been concentrated in Asia, and especially, East Asia, with the major improvement occurring in China. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people in extreme poverty has increased.”(Hearken) This describes that people around the world has been experiencing poverty because of the money they make from their jobs. People who have a higher education gets the ability to make more money and get paid more while many people around the world with lower education makes less money which make them have more responsibilities for paying bills, housing and other miscellaneous. Considering illness or disabilities for people who can’t work is part of poverty because if they can’t work they don’t make money. It is also a reason why they can’t provide a nourished food for their kids that’s is why most kids now a day has suffered from malnutrition because of lack of foods to eat. That is why many people struggle providing good and healthy food for their family. Grocery shopping can cost a lot of money especially if you don’t know how to budget your money. In today’s people tend to buy cheaper food like process foods and frozen foods which is easier for them and more convenient but forgetting the important food they need like fresh vegetables and non-frozen foods.