In the future, will the rich, able to afford a diet optimized to their genetic makeup, become a super species, living substantially longer than the underprivileged, or will today’s society make access to adequate nutrition a global agenda and a basic human right?
These questions and others were addressed by nearly 50 nutrition, public health, food technology and economic thought leaders from 11 countries at a global roundtable discussion in Santa Barbara, in the US state of California, on March 12, 2008. Among the panel leading the discussions were two Nobel Laureates and several Medal of science winners. The ground-breaking event, on the theme Hidden Hunger:
Socioeconomic and Scientific Challenges, was co-organized by SIGHT AND LIFE, the Oxygen Club of California (OCC), the Linus Pauling Institute, and the University of Southern California (USC) School of Pharmacy. SIGHT AND LIFE’s Secretary General, Dr Klaus Kraemer, originated the idea for it together with Dr Lester Packer, the world’s foremost anti- oxidants scientist. The main purpose of the event was to advance a common agenda for the global community to address hidden hunger that would include the following strategies:
• Making possible the local production of high-quality foods
containing all vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) in the
countries that need them, while doing so in a culturally friendly way and making use of locally-available staple foods.
• Scaling up food fortification so that more countries implement mandatory and voluntary fortification strategies.
• Making more use of multimicronutrient powder that can be
conveniently added at the point of use to locally-produced foods.
Dr Kraemer stated, “So far, we have primarily addressed non- governmental and governmental organizations as well as the United Nations community, but SIGHT AND LIFE encourages the nutrition industry to pick up these recommendations because there are plenty of business opportunities for quality products that are in need.”
“To avoid this in the future,” he said, “we need to help create legal frameworks in countries, defining what types of ingredients manufacturers can add to food, and in what
quantities, plus quality assurance and enforcement measures for industry to comply with.” Stephan Tanda, a member of the DSM Managing Board responsible for its Nutrition Cluster and a roundtable participant, added, “Malnutrition is a global crisis [that] stunts the lives and livelihood of more than two billion people worldwide.”
Noting a recent article in the scientific journal, The Lancet, that suggested providing young children with proper nutrition could boost their earning power as adults, Tanda continued, “We must determine how to sustainably provide proper nutrition to all who are malnourished. As a leading provider of nutritional ingredients, DSM is well positioned to be part of the solution.”
Hidden hunger affects populations in rich and poor nations alike. In the USA, for example, despite the fortification of flour with iron and B vitamins, iron deficiency still affects 2.4 million children and is more severe among overweight children of low socioeconomic status. Millions of US citizens (11% of all
households) are unable to buy nutritious food for economic reasons, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). A Canadian study suggests that this translates into significant nutrient inadequacies among adults and adolescents. Similarly, a recent report from Mexico showed the simultaneous risk of overweight and stunting (short linear growth due to hidden hunger) among pre-school children.
Notable participants of the roundtable included Dr Daniel McFadden and Dr Bruce N. Ames (from the University of California, Berkeley, USA), Dr Alfred Sommer (from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA), Dr Ricardo Uauy (from the London School of Hygiene and Topical Medicine, UK), Dr V. Prakash (from the Central Food Technological Research
Institute, India), Dr Venkatesh Mannar (from The Micronutrient Initiative, Canada), Dr Rob Russell (from the Tufts University, Boston, USA), and representatives from the Medical Nobel Institute for Biochemistry (Stockholm, Sweden) and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (Washington, DC, USA).
The roundtable was timed to precede the biannual confer- ence of the OCC, held on March 13-15. At the banquet during the OCC conference, SIGHT AND LIFE was honored with the OCC’s Frontiers Science and Humanity Award for its dedication to eradicating nutrient deficiencies and improving child health and development.
To Dr Kraemer, this award, as well as the award from the Micronutrient Forum in 2007, is a great stimulus to the initiative. “SIGHT AND LIFE will do everything in its power to get hidden hunger higher on the global agenda,” he said. “Our resources are limited and we rely to a large extent on our partnerships with stakeholders in academia, non-govern- mental organizations, UN agencies, and industry but by leveraging these partnerships, we can achieve a great deal.”
Dr Kraemer believes the multi-disciplinary nature of the roundtable makes its messages all the more convincing. He underscores this with a promise: “We aim to publish a scientific paper in a top journal around key messages that are understood not only within our nutrition circles. We’ll use it for advocacy purposes to put nutrition issues higher on the agendas of governments around the world.”
In pace with our own evolution to stay up-to-date and
embrace new avenues for knowledge sharing, a podcast
series and videocast from the roundtable is available
for download from our website, www.sightandlife.org.
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