Roughly one in four children
under age 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition: 150.8 million in
2017, equal to 22.2 % of all children in the world, according to
a recent UNICEF report.
"There is a problem of food security for children living in
the poorest families in Italy as well," the head of the Italian
branch of the UN agency, Francesco Samengo, said.
"However," he stressed, "malnutrition does not mean only not
having enough to eat. It also means eating in an incorrect or
unhealthy way. This is why, through this report, we want to
highlight the problem of childhood obesity, which is taking on
the contours of a true epidemic."
Childhood obesity is growing due both to inactivity and bad
eating habits, he said. This is especially true of Italy, where
the percentage of children and adolescents that are obese rose
three times over between 1975 and 2016.
Another problem is disorderly eating habits, he added, citing
"growing unease among adolescents" and "a series of other
problems such as bullying linked to body image".
Childhood obesity UNICEF noted, is due both to excessive
consumption of sugar and fatty foods and an overly sedentary
lifestyle.
According to the most recent data from national statistics
institute ISTAT, some 48.8% of children between the ages of 3
and 5 are sedentary, those this percentage drops in the
subsequent years only to climb back up in the 18-19 age group to
20.8%.
The report draws attention to the fact that, at the
international level, in children between the ages of 9 and 14,
7.1% of males and 13.4% of females show disturbed eating habits.
These habits are the most frequent in industrialized,
high-income countries.
Some 50.5 million children in the world are suffering from
acute malnutrition. In 2017, 55% of children affected by chronic
malnutrition lived in Asia, 39% in Africa. As concerns acute
malnutrition, 69% of them lived in Asia and 27% in Africa.
Over 200 million children suffer from malnutrition if all the
forms of it are taken into consideration. Malnutrition was the
cause of the death of about 3 million children in 2017.
The same year 38.3 million children under age 5 were
overweight: one in three in Europe, 9.7 million in Africa, 17.5
million in Asia, 3.9 million in Latin America and the Caribbean
and 1.7 million in North America, according to a recent UNICEF
report.
A UN report released in September noted that hunger affected
around 821 million worldwide in 2017 and has been rising over
the past three years. The report had been prepared by the UN's
three Rome-based food agencies - FAO, WFP and IFAD - along with
UNICEF and the WHO.
Poor progress has been made in reducing child stunting, the
report said, with nearly 151 million children aged under five
too short for their age due to malnutrition in 2017.
Prevalence of child wasting remains extremely high in Asia
where almost one in 10 children under five has low weight for
their height, compared to just one in 100 in Latin America and
the Caribbean.
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