World Food Day: Nutrition environments as a key to overcoming malnutrition

The simultaneous occurrence of poor nutrition, undernutrition and overnutrition characterises the current nutrition situation. Urbanisation and economic development are increasingly changing lifestyles and, as a result, nutritional behaviour and eating habits. This holds potentials and risks for improving nutrition.
The nutrition environment describes the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural context in which consumers act for decision making with regard to food acquisition, preparation and consumption. Research into nutritional behaviour and habits, as well as their drivers, plays a key role in developing appropriate opportunities for change for a health-promoting diet.

The NaviNut project: Strengthen women's empowerment for better child nutrition

Especially in the arid regions of the African continent, the number of poor nourished and undernourished children is alarming. Although nutrition recommendations exist, they have been insufficiently implemented so far. Only minor improvements in children's nutrition have been observed. As women bear the main responsibility for feeding the family, they face the challenge of having to find their way in a changing food environment. Therefore, the NaviNut project in Benin and Kenya is exploring with mothers how they can improve the nutrition of their families, especially of children and infants.

Knowledge sharing through cooking demonstration (mixed cereal porridge) between Star women's Group (Burji) and Biftu group (Borana). Source: Center for Research and Development in Drylands (CRDD), Kenia

The NaviNut project supports mothers in their decisions about feeding their infants. It explores how to promote the accessibility and attractiveness of locally available, nutritious, traditional food all year round. The development of suitable dialogue formats and learning opportunities for the mothers, based on their existing knowledge, plays an essential role here. In addition, local health services are involved to integrate existing and new knowledge on nutritional aspects of nutritious, traditional foods into health work.

The project activities so far show that the mothers show knowledge and local innovations that have not yet found their way into advisory measures for improving child nutrition. Special local conditions, such as drought or remoteness and culture, have also not been sufficiently taken into account so far. According to this, the nutritional environments of mothers in neighbouring areas differ considerably in some cases, which has a major impact on food choice and dietary diversity in child nutrition.

NaviNut - empowering women in changing nutrition environments to improve child nutrition in arid regions in Africa:

• Teilvorhaben 1
• Teilvorhaben 2

The FoodSAMSA project: Address undernutrition, poor nutrition, malnutrition and overnutrition simultaneously

Often, different forms of inadequate nutrition and the associated secondary diseases occur together within entire populations or even individuals and influence each other. For example, undernutrition in childhood can increase the risk of overnutrition and obesity in adulthood. An unbalanced and incorrect diet can lead to obesity and a deficiency of micronutrients at the same time. The term "double burden of malnutrition" has become established for this phenomenon.

Meeting of the project consortium with community health workers in the townships of Gugulethu and Nyanga at the Zolani Centre in Nyanga, Western Cape, South Africa Source: FoodSAMSA

With a focus on South Africa, the Food-SAMSA project identifies the drivers and causes of this double burden and develops appropriate countermeasures at policy, community, household and individual levels. It equips policy makers and actors in the formal and informal food industry and civil society with key competencies to develop and implement effective measures to promote healthy diets that meet people's needs.

The results of the project so far illustrate that South Africans are often exposed to an unhealthy nutrition environment. To address this issue, measures, guidelines and programmes that influence nutrition at policy, community and individual levels are an effective lever.

Food-SAMSA - designing nutrition environments to jointly address undernutrition, poor nutritrion, malnutrition and overnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa

Background: International research on world nutrition

The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) supports further projects and international research cooperation in the field of world nutrition. The aim is to develop demand-oriented knowledge and solution approaches through research cooperation between German research institutions and those in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia.

In addition, interregional cooperation and transnational knowledge sharing should strengthen the development of scientific networks, establish long-term partnerships and contribute to the further development of local capacities (capacity development). Fundamental to this is the use of participatory, practice- and application-oriented as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research approaches. The BLE as project sponsor is responsible for the administrative processing and technical support of the international research projects on behalf of the BMEL.