While nutritional status has improved worldwide over the past fifty years, new nutrition-related problems have also emerged. In an article recently published in The Journal of Nutrition, Eileen Kennedy DSc, RD, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, offers an updated view of global nutrition.
She describes how global demographic, epidemiological, and nutritional transitions have led to a unique situation in which food insecurity (uncertain or scarce access to safe and healthy food) exists side by side with problems of obesity and chronic nutrition-related diseases, even in the same household. Kennedy, former acting undersecretary at the United States Department of Agriculture, calls for new research to address this emerging and complex new problem.
"A global nutrition transition has and is occurring on a continuum. While problems of under-consumption and poor nutritional status continue to exist, increasingly problems of diet/chronic diseases are emerging as significant public health issues globally," says Kennedy. A demographic shift has resulted in increased life expectancy in many countries, and in some countries, this means an older population. Closely tied with this change in age structure is an epidemiological shift which has decreased communicable diseases and increased chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, she reports.