World Food Day: WFP and Unicef collaborate to improve nutrition

In Syria, one-year-old Alia went several days with barely anything to eat as her family fled conflict. When admitted to hospital, she was diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, or wasting. In Mali, two-year old Alimatou may have enough food to eat, but the lack of nutritional diversity and micronutrients in meals caused her to be chronically malnourished, or stunted. And in Mexico, 10-year-old Ricky suffers from childhood obesity, which is strongly linked to diets high in processed food including fats and sugars.

What do Alia, Alimatou and Ricky all have in common?

Each suffers from a form of malnutrition due to the poor nutritional quality and/or quantity of their diets. For Alimatou, it’s mainly rice, water and sugar. For Ricky, it’s fast or processed foods. And for Alia, it’s whatever her family could find as they fled conflict.

A global challenge

Currently, 149 million children aged under 5 are stunted, almost 50 million are ‘wasted’, and 40 million are overweight. UNICEF estimates that at least one in two children under 5 suffers from ‘hidden hunger,’ with deficiencies of vitamins and other essential nutrients.

Challenges are often related to economic factors inhibiting access to a balanced diet with access to different food groups. But it is often rooted in a lack of knowledge on the right amount, frequency, and diversity of food needed for children.

The scale and severity of COVID-19 has brought additional complexities to the situation. Recent estimates indicate that child wasting could rise by 14 per cent, or 6-7 million children, due to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19. More families are falling below the poverty line and the economic downturn is expected to intensify existing food insecurity which may lead to a deteriorating nutrition situation.

In Quotes:

‘WFP saves and changes lives by working towards the goal of ending malnutrition and a shared vision of a world beyond hunger. No child should ever go to bed hungry, so we’ve got to go out there & be willing to fight for them.’

David Beasley, WFP Executive Director

‘Far too many of our children and young people are not getting the diets they need, which is undermining their capacity to grow, develop and learn to their full potential. That hurts not just individual children and young people, it hurts us all.’

Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF Executive Director

Over the past three decades, much work has been done to improve the situation, including nutrition counselling for caregivers and providing nutrition supplements for families. Stunting rates have declined from 39 per cent in 1990 to a current 21.9 per cent globally. But much more must be done if over half of the world’s young children are still suffering.

One major challenge is that most nutrition counselling sessions offered are conducted without utensils to illustrate quantity and quality — tools a caregiver can take with them to continue good practices at home.

Bowled over

The complementary feeding bowl, a frugal and practical innovation by UNICEF based on initial work by Emory University, is being tested in several regions, most recently with the World Food Programme (WFP) in MENA, which includes:

1. A bowl with dietary-diversity messages included in the design to address food quality, and demarcations of age group, volume and number of meals inside the bowl
2. A slotted spoon to ensure that the first semi-solid food, after weaning off breastmilk, is of the right consistency, energy-dense and not watered down.

The theory: If caregivers are given a simple, easy-to-use device, they will be reminded of the children’s nutritional needs, and continue healthy practices at home. So far, prototypes have been tested by Emory University in five countries (including India, Kenya, Malawi) which have all indicated positive results with increases in meal frequency, quantity and thickness of food.

This innovation considers local needs for customizing the bowl, such as food groups and language to ensure acceptability among beneficiaries. It also caters for different population groups, for example, by including disability-empowering features. In addition, the nutrition messages in the design will follow UNICEF guidance on Complementary Feeding and WFP’s Nutritional Guidance on Complementary Foods

Product testing in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

UNICEF and WFP have joined forces to improve the quality of complementary feeding and nutrition practices for children in the MENA region. Together, they will test the bowl and spoon through small-scale implementation in 3-5 countries and gather evidence on acceptability and any need for iterations to the current designs.

This may involve incorporating the bowl into UNICEF’s standard IYCF counselling sessions as well with WFP’s nutrition treatment and prevention programmes, food-delivery programming and transfer modalities (food, cash, voucher). Both organizations have committed resources and are working together to refine the designs for local adaptation.

Impact

The aim is to improve complementary feeding practices in the region and thereby prevent malnutrition, highly needed in a region with 5.4 million children overweight and nearly 11 million children who suffer from chronic or acute malnutrition.

After incorporating improvements with feedback from testing in several regions, the next step is to bring this product to scale. While working together with governments and partners, this innovation has the potential to reach millions of caregivers across countries and regions, both in rural and urban areas.

To learn more about the complementary feeding bowl and other innovation efforts, visit the UNICEF product innovation website. To read more about WFP Nutrition programmes visit the WFP website