BY TADDESE ZERFU, FANTU BACHEWE, TIRSIT GENYE, MERON GIRMA, AREGASH SAMUEL, JAMES WARNER, AND CORNELIA VAN ZYL
Hidden hunger—the silent epidemic of micronutrient deficiencies—is driven by poverty and continues to be a major public health challenge in the developing world. More than 3 billion people worldwide, primarily in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, simply cannot afford a diet rich in vital vitamins and minerals. The prevalence of iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A, and folate deficiencies is alarmingly high worldwide.
Micronutrient deficits are frequently caused by poor quality diets that rely heavily on monotonous starchy staple foods lacking in key vitamins and minerals. Increasing dietary diversity, food fortification, micronutrient supplementation, fermentation and other forms of food processing, and other strategies have been defined to combat the hidden epidemic of micronutrient deficiencies.
Despite some progress in reducing chronic malnutrition, Ethiopia continues to be an epicenter of the triple burden of malnutrition—undernutrition, overnutrition, and micronutrient deficiencies. To address the latter, the government has developed a national guideline on food fortification, particularly targeting selected items such as wheat and edible oils. There are also ongoing supplementation programs for vitamin A and iron-folic acid, among others. However, these interventions are predominantly accessible mainly to urban beneficiaries, so the rural poor are hardly covered, creating inequities in access to micronutrient-fortified foods. In addition, dietary diversity among women and children in rural areas is generally poor. Thus, biofortification—breeding crops to increase their nutritional value—may be a viable strategy in Ethiopia for addressing dietary gaps and combating micronutrient deficiencies, addressing the limitations of the more established interventions.
Our recent study, published in Food and Nutrition Bulletin, assesses the state of biofortification in Ethiopia, finding that the practice has potential as a measure to address the country’s hidden hunger problem—but that to be effective, it requires greater institutional commitments by the government, researchers, and others. Read more >>