Why Nutrition

Why Nutrition

Why Care About Nutrition

Undernutrition is the single biggest contributor to child mortality, and one of the world's most serious health and human development challenges. Poor nutrition causes a range of serious and costly health problems, from impaired cognitive and physical development to illness, disease and death.

>  Globally, malnutrition affects one in two people
>  2 billion people are deficient in micronutrients
>  1.5 billion people are overweight
>  162 million children under five are stunted
>  About half of children’s deaths are because of undernutrition

Why Multisectoral Approaches

Nutrition initiatives can only get us partway there. As the underlying drivers of nutrition status are multisectoral - spanning agriculture, food security, early child development, health, social protection, water, sanitation, hygiene - so too must be the interventions to address them.

Agriculture - About 80 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and the majority of them work in agriculture. If we improve nutrition then farmers can be more productive, and can enhance the quantity and quality of affordable food.

Food security - This means more people can have year-round access to more nutritious food, closing the loop between nutrition, agriculture and food security.

Early child development - Child growth and brain development in the first three years of life depend on both stimulation and nutrition.

Health - Poor nutrition affects health outcomes, and poor health affects nutrition outcomes. Whether we’re dealing with undernutrition or obesity, it’s a two-way street.

Social protection - A social protection system that invests in nutrition can promote income security, and can prevent poverty being passed on from generation, to generation, to generation.

WASH - Finally, poor water, sanitation and hygiene (a.k.a. WASH) lead to diarrhea and other illnesses, and this results in poor absorption of nutrients and undernutrition.

Incorporate Nutrition in Your Project

We invite you to join our growing community of people, determined to address nutrition and child development across sectors. We set up SecureNutrition, a platform that bridges knowledge gaps, increases collaboration and drives action. SecureNutrition includes:

An easy-to-use how-to-guide to incorporate nutrition into your projects,
>  A comprehensive library of evidence-based resources,
A timely calendar of relevant events,
A rich collection of case studies from all around the world,
A vibrant community to share and shape ideas in real time,
And access to hands-on advice from the SecureNutrition team.

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Productivity losses due to malnutrition are estimated at more than 10 percent of an individuals lifetime earnings, and as high as 2 to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)


Scaling up the core package of proven nutrition-specific interventions to 90% coverage in high nutrition burden countries would result in a decrease of only 20% in global stunting


Nearly one-half of all child deaths are attributes to undernutrition.