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	Report warns of dangers of fast-food spread in developing countries by Naomi Hossain Institute for Development Studies, agencies   September 2016 (IDS)   A new report published by the Institute of Development Studies and Oxfam finds that the global food crisis of 2007-11 brought about lasting changes to the relationship between the work people do and the food they eat – the costs of which have gone uncounted by global policymakers.   When food prices spiked in 2008, the international price of basic food items peaked at unprecedented levels, bringing a wave of food riots in low-income countries. Subsequent price volatility and peaks had huge impacts on millions of people who struggled to feed their families nutritiously.   The price spike was undoubtedly experienced as a crisis by the many people who were already spending half or more of their earnings on food. The research finds that many people are increasingly turning to cheap, readily-available processed foods that are high in sugars, fats and salt.   Precarious Lives: Food, Work and Care After the Global Food Crisis is the final report from Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility, a four-year research project led by IDS, Oxfam and partners in ten countries: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Vietnam and Zambia.   The project aimed to explore how well people are living after the global food crisis left food prices higher and more volatile than they had been for a generation.   Through yearly visits from 2012–15 to 23 urban and rural communities, and analysis of national and international food data, researchers observed rapid changes in people''s eating habits and – alongside accelerated urbanisation – a move to more dangerous, demeaning and insecure jobs as people worked longer hours to raise the cash needed to put food on the table.   As people worked harder and longer, and migrated to towns, other regions or countries to find work, more turned to heavily-marketed convenience fast food, particularly unhealthy processed items with high fat/sugar/salt content – a more ‘Westernised’ diet.   People in all communities had concerns about food safety and quality. Many called for regulation to protect children from the advertising and marketing strategies that encourage poor eating habits from the earliest years.   The impact was particularly great for women, who are working harder – especially in informal employment – while at the same time maintaining the household and caring for children. Their time and energy are being squeezed as never before.   IDS research fellow Naomi Hossain said: "Our research found that in addition to cutting down on pricey items, replacing nutritionally-rich food with filling staples and borrowing cash to buy food, people in all research sites are turning to unhealthy fast food. Governments in developing countries need to pay urgent attention to these changes, and implement appropriate food safety and advertising standards regulation, in order to guard against a global epidemic of unbalanced nutrition and obesity."   The report also found that official statistics are masking the true costs of the food crisis on people''s lives – particularly women, who often go uncounted in national and international data sources. The researchers are calling for better data on unpaid care work, irregular, short-term, dangerous and illegal work; and on changing diets to allow policymakers to make better decisions about social protection policies and programmes.   The true impact of the food crisis on people''s lives has been masked, by Naomi Hossain.   When food prices spiked in 2008, the international price of basic items peaked at unprecedented levels, bringing a wave of food riots in low-income countries.   Subsequent price volatility and peaks put huge pressure on millions of people, many of whom already spent half or more of their incomes and labour effort on getting enough rice, maize or bread. It was as though their real incomes had been cut in half.   The sense of crisis died down when price spikes flattened out in 2012 and the threat of food riots receded. But although global prices remained high, while locally, they dropped slightly, plateaued or continued to climb, they stopped making headlines.   So what happened next? In the aftermath of the crisis, there have been rapid and significant changes in people’s eating, working and social lives, according to the research we did for a report published last week. Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility was a real-time investigation, led by the Institute of Development Studies and Oxfam, into how people on low and uncertain incomes adjusted to their place in the global economy once they could no longer rely on cheap food.   Researchers returned repeatedly to 23 communities in sub-Saharan Africa, south and south-east Asia and in Latin America.We found that the relationship between labour and food changed, making it harder for people to feed their families, care for their children and elderly, to socialise and help each other, and to plan for their futures – to reproduce their societies, in short.   For those people for whom securing food already absorbed most of their resources and energies, the months and years after the crisis brought intense pressure to alter their relationship to food: to earn more to cover the basics, and to extract more value from whatever they consumed.   People worked harder to secure the bare necessities, and more of that effort took them into – and left them at the mercies of – food and labour markets.   The aftermath of the food crisis showed that if peoples’ basic needs are not protected, failures in the markets on which they increasingly rely will lead to two things.   The first is not surprising: people move into precarious kinds of labour, where they will do pretty much whatever it takes to earn more cash. This means a move to more insecure, demeaning or dangerous jobs – such as the Bangladeshi men who moved back into the forest to fish, braving tigers and pirates to do so.   The impact on working life is particularly great for women, who are working harder – especially in informal employment – while at the same time maintaining the household and caring for children. Their time and energy are being squeezed as never before.   The second is less obvious: people eat more convenient or processed foods, so long as they are cheap, cheerful and available. People described the shift from teff and enjera, the customary fermented bread of Ethiopia, to wheat flour and bread in these terms.   As people worked harder and longer, and migrated to towns, other regions or countries to find work, more turned to heavily-marketed convenience fast food, particularly unhealthy processed items with high fat/sugar/salt content – a more “westernised” diet.   What we have learned about life as it is lived since the end of the cheap food era is that public policy needs to focus on more than basic incomes. It needs to protect “the social” – the dimensions of human wellbeing that are always beyond and unserved by the market: the unpaid work of feeding families, the right to safe and dignified labour, the benefits of community systems for protecting against hunger, the historical and nutritional riches of customary cuisines and the traditional agrofood systems on which they depend.   Official statistics are masking the true costs of the food crisis on people’s lives – particularly women, who often go uncounted in national and international data sources. We need better data on unpaid care work, irregular, short-term, dangerous and illegal work – and on changing diets to allow policymakers to make better decisions about social protection policies and programmes.   Neither dangerous and precarious jobs, nor replacing customary cuisine with cheap and easy calories are good for society, nor for public policy goals of social protection, human development, women’s empowerment, let alone food and nutrition security.   * Naomi Hossain is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and co-author of Precarious Lives: Food, Work and Care After the Global Food Crisis.   * Access the 76 page report: http://bit.ly/2d0TDrX   http://www.ids.ac.uk/precariouslives http://www.ids.ac.uk/socialprotectionthatnourishes Visit the related web page
	Study reveals child undernutrition taking a huge toll on Chad’s Economy by World Food Programme, agencies   The economy of Chad is losing some 575.8 billion CFA francs (US$1.2 billion) a year – or 9.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product – to the effects of child undernutrition, according to a new study launched today in the capital.   The Cost of Hunger in Africa: the Social and Economic Impact of Child Undernutrition on Chad’s Long-Term Development (COHA) shows vast amounts being lost through increased healthcare costs, additional burdens on the education system and lower productivity by the workforce.   The study reveals that 56.4 percent of adults suffered from stunting as children. This represents more than 3.4 million people of working age who are not able to achieve their full potential as a consequence of child undernutrition. Lower physical capacity results in 63.7 billion CFA worth of losses in economic productivity. The toll of sickness linked to child undernutrition is estimated at 168.5 billion CFA in additional health costs.   Stunting, which leads to children being short for their age, is a sign of chronic undernourishment and occurs when children lack the calories and proteins - and sometimes vitamins and minerals - they need to grow.   Stunting among Chadian children under the age of five fell to 39 percent in 2010 from 45 percent in 2004, according to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report. More than 183,000 children in Chad died from undernutrition in the last five years, the COHA study said.   "Africa and Chad in particular has the potential to reap a demographic dividend from a young, educated and skilled work force. But this potential can only be harnessed if the gains of early investments in the health and nutrition of its people, particularly its women and children, are maintained and result in the desired economic growth," said Dr. Margaret Agama-Anyetei, Head of the African Union’s Division for Health, Nutrition and Population.   The report argues that for Chad to achieve sustainable human and economic growth, special attention must be given to the early stages of life, as a foundation of human capital. Without measures to combat and eliminate undernutrition, the cost to Chad will only escalate.   “The study provides us with compelling evidence of the consequences of child undernutrition, as well as the justification to increase investment in nutrition and the potential economic returns if we are to take aggressive measures towards eliminating stunting,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, County Director of WFP Chad.   Chad is the ninth country on the continent to conduct a COHA study. It has already been undertaken in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland and Uganda. Also underway are COHA studies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.   Studies to date have shown African economies losing the equivalent of between 1.9 to 16 percent of GDP to child undernutrition.   To counter this loss and for Chad to achieve sustainable human and economic growth, the report urges that special attention be given to the early stages of life. A lack of measures to combat and eliminate childhood undernutrition will only escalate the country’s costs.   “The study provides us with compelling evidence of the consequences of child undernutrition, as well as the justification to increase investment in nutrition and the potential economic returns if we are to take aggressive measures towards eliminating stunting,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, Country Director of WFP Chad.   “The goal of eliminating stunting, and more broadly of eliminating hunger, will be achieved only through a sustained and coordinated effort,” said WFP’s Africa Office Director and Representative to the African Union and Economic Commission for Africa, Thomas Yanga, speaking on behalf of WFP and ECA, “We hope that when the economic cost of hunger in Chad becomes apparent, the findings and recommendations of the study will pave the way for all stakeholders to take decisive action.”   The Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) is a Pan-African initiative led by the African Union Commission and the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA), with support from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the World Food Programme (WFP): http://www.costofhungerafrica.com/ http://www.compact2025.org/ http://scalingupnutrition.org/ Visit the related web page
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