Free Food Not the Answer

03/31/2006

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle

A new World Bank report, “Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development,” observes that while nutrition remains the world’s most serious health problem, traditional feeding programs are not the answer. The lead author of the report, Meera Shekar, said that feeding programs are costly and vulnerable to corruption, with publicly provided food too easily given to better-off people or siphoned off to be sold.

“You get more bang for your buck without the food,” she said. “The food brings in votes for politicians. We have very little evidence it improves nutrition.”

Instead, the report recommends, the emphasis of any program to combat nutrition should target pregnant women and children under two years of age.

“There is actually a very, very tight window of opportunity which is between conception through the first two years of life,” Shekar says. “If we miss this window, we miss a whole generation.

“This is the time when the damage that happens due to malnutrition is in fact essentially irreparable damage. So if we had only one dollar to invest in improving nutrition that is where we would like to focus our actions.”

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