The Guardian reports that an overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.
The Global Nutrition Report 2020 found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition as well as the ubiquity and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries, it says.
One in nine people is hungry, or 820 million people worldwide, the report found, while one in three is overweight or obese. An increasing number of countries have the “double burden” of malnutrition, obesity and other diet-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
