Hunger and obesity coexist in Latin America and the Caribbean, warns the FAO

The outbreak of COVID-19 and its consequences on family economies made it clear that in Latin America and the Caribbean hunger coexists with obesity and overweight, a problem that dates back years and was further complicated by the pandemic, warned the FAO.

As a result of the pandemic, it was possible to show that, for about 20 years, “At a thousand an hour, another manifestation of food insecurity is advancing, which is overweight and obesity.”, explained in La Paz the regional representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Julio Berdegué.

“What has happened in the world and in Latin America and the Caribbean with great force, unfortunately here we are a leading region in this thing that is not good at all, is that there was a very radical change in the diets that we consume“, lament.

Now much more processed food is consumed, full of fats, sugars, calories, sodium, ingredients that in large quantities “they are very harmful to health”, he pointed.

To illustrate this situationhideous“, the representative mentioned that only in South America there are 68 million obese adults and recalled that this causes diseases such as diabetes and different types of cancer “which are already the main cause of death in Latin America”.

According to Berdegué, the case of Bolivia is “alarming”, since about 1.5 million inhabitants are in a condition of hunger, but there are also another 8.6 million adults “in a condition of obesity”.

This country “is a little worse than the rest of South America”because 28% of its population is obese, compared to a subregional rate of 23%, he warned.

“The situation of food insecurity has these two faces in Bolivia. Too many people are still hungry and many times they are the same people because there is no money, because there is food in Bolivia, food is not lacking, what is lacking is the money to buy it”, he stated.

Causes and actions

This problem “came from before”, “has many different causes” and it is not easy to solve because it has many associated factors, among them the fact that it is now less frequent to cook at home, in addition to a “invasion of imported food that is of very poor nutritional quality“, among others.

There is also the monetary factor, since healthy diets are usually more expensive and those families in poverty are forced to buy processed food, which is cheaper, something that has become more complicated with the arrival of COVID-19, he explained.

“As the pandemic hit people’s pockets very hard, many millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean had to move to cheaper food because they lost their jobs.“, he pointed.

Given this, the region emerged with the commitment to transform agri-food systems to recover the equation “food equals health”, according to Berdegué.

He stressed that in some countries initiatives were taken such as taxes on sugary drinks to discourage their consumption, support for the poorest families so that they can access healthier foods and regulations that require processed products to indicate on their packaging if they are high in calories. , fats or sugars, he stressed.