Christopher Mims
QuartzSat, 22 Feb 2014 12:43 UTC
© Per Square Mile/Tim De Chant Half of children in the reddest countries are dangerously underweight due to malnutrition.
Few maps are more concerning than this one.
Created by journalist Tim De Chant, it shows the
percentage of children in each country whose weight is "more than two standard deviations below the median of the NCHS/CDC/WHO International Reference Population."
In other words, this map depicts the percentage of children in each country who are dangerously underweight on account of malnutrition. (Quantifying just how underweight these children are is difficult without knowing the variation in weight in the study population.) Data are from 1990 to 2002 and countries in blue indicate no data was available.
© Per Square Mile/Tim De ChantIn parts of Sudan and Niger, half of all children suffer from malnutrition.
That belt of red stretching from Africa through India, encompassing tens of millions of children, represents perhaps the biggest waste of human capital in history. Children who suffer from malnutrition are more susceptible to disease, less capable of getting an education and are likely to suffer from permanently stunted growth.
© Per Square Mile/Tim De ChantParts of Pakistan and India have proportions of underweight children as bad or worse than war-torn regions of Africa.
Many of the regions experiencing highest population growth are also the ones suffering the highest rates of child hunger.
...for the children of Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia are definitely not underweight but ideally weighted vis-a-vis physical structure and climatic conditions. Here, we eat more saturated fat, meats and less temperate grains such as wheat. In Thailand and Vietnam, a lot of people are still not affluent enough to afford processed foods and naturally stick to hawker styled cooking or home-cooking for daily meals. Conversely, many Chinese have now become overweight due to high levels of wheat flour consumption, sugar and of course processed foods as one of the largest processed foods producers in the world. In Shanghai alone, there are more Macdonald's and Haagen-Daz outlets in just this one city compared to an entire country like Vietnam!