UNESCO and nutrition education

UNESCO Courier, April, 1984 by Susan Van Der Vynckt

MALNUTRITION occurs when, over an extended period of time, the food consumed by an individual does not provide energy and/or nutrients in the amounts needed by the body. Under conditions prevailing in most developing countries, malnutrition may be more accurately described as undernutrition, since it reflects an insufficient intake of food, often combined with nfections and parasitic diseases that lower the capacity of the body to utilize the energy and nutrients of whatever little food is consumed... There are also situations in which the food intake may be sufficient, even if marginally, to meet the individual's energy requirements, but is lacking in one key nutrient. This results in specific nutritional diseases, the most common of which are iron-deficiency anaemia, vitamin A-deficiency xerophthalmia and iodine-deficiency goitre."

The cold technically of this excerpt from a recent document issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (it goes on to state that about a quarter of the children in those developing countries for which data are available suffer from moderate to severe malnutrition) does nothing to lessen the horror of the fact that malnutrition has become perhaps the major public health problem facing the developing world.

Poor and inadequate nutrition and related illnesses interfere substantially with learning ability, educational performance and the capacity to work. Malnutrition is thus both a symptom of underdevelopment and a major obstacle to the successful pursuit of national advance.

Although poverty is undoubtedly the principal cause of malnutrition, ignorance, taboos and poor nutrition practices are important contributory factors. Nutrition education, if properly designed and effectively carried out, can help people, young and old, to learn about their nutritional needs and what they themselves can do the better to meet these needs. It is in this field that Unesco is making a major contribution to the fight against hunger.

All too often in the past nutrition education has been confined to the teaching in the classroom of food values and nutrient content. A much broader, far more effective approach to nutrition education is being developed which views nutrition as the study of all aspects of food and eating behaviour and includes all levels of formal and non-formal education and the mass media.

There are many channels for nutrition education and its effectiveness depends on using as many of these channels as possible. Nutrition education is, for example, being successfully incorporated into a range of non-formal education programmes including literacy, post-literacy, adult education, rural extension and community development work.

Some successful attempts are being made at incorporating nutrition teaching into literacy programmes for women. These programmes are an excellent opportunity to reach mothers wth young children and can provide them with knowledge adn skills that are practical, affordable and necessary to improve their own nutrition and that of their young children. Well-designed and effectively carried out, nutrition education in female literacy could bring about significant changes in the nutritional situation of millions of mothers and children in the developing world.

Over the past several years an impressive and growing base of experience has been accumulating around the world concerning the use of the media in nutrition and health promotion and the important role it can play in supporting other channels of nutrition education.

The efficacy of mass communication is indisputable in terms of its cost-effectiveness in delivering nutrition information to large numbers of people and stimulating and sustaining interest in nutrition. It is therefore important that in and out-of-school nutrition education benefit from a close partnership with the media. Communication and education personnel must work together in developing integrated media and education strategies for the promotion and maintenance of better nutrition and health.

Unesco is involved in a number of activities aimed at addressing problems of nutrition through education both in and out of school. These include:

the preparation of a package of nutrition education materials consisting of a sourcebook for education planners and those responsible for the elaboration of curcicula and the training of teachers, and other low-cost instructional support materials;

conducting, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), workshops for media specialists and assisting in the development of national media campaigns for the promotion of good nutrition and public health practices;

developing methods for teaching and learning about nutrition that emphasize learning by experience and problem-solving (storytelling, educational games, food demonstrations, garden projects, activities based on children teaching other children);

developing, in collaboration with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), a series of teaching modules and materials on child heath and nutrition for literacy programmes. These modules are based on the identification of local nutritional problems and the specific knowledge and skills needed to enable these problems to be handled within the household.