FOOD SECURITY - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 36

It is estimated that 35% of the world population or around 2 billion people, living
in areas with iodine-poor soils, are at risk of having too low intakes of iodine. This is
especially the case in hilly or mountainous areas, relatively far from the sea, where
iodine has been washed out, and seafood is usually not available. In these areas, a
change in dietary patterns is not feasible. The preferred and most successful
intervention is the widely applied technology of fortification of (table) salt with
iodine, which hardly affects its price. A drawback is that the salt after having been
fortified does not mix well with water, so that after packaging, iodine distribution is
heterogeneous. A second point is that in areas where salt is naturally occurring, the
natural salt is preferred (mostly for its taste, and the lower price).
The nutrition transition: nutritional diseases of affluence in developing countries
Urbanization
While the largest proportion of the world's food insecure live in rural areas, due
attention is necessary for the situation of the urban poor. Continued urbanization
will lead to a situation where, by 2020, more than half of the population of Africa
and Asia will live in urban centers. In Latin America, already over 70% of the
population is urban. The characteristics of urban food insecurity are different from
those in rural areas, requiring different interventions.
Where in rural areas, underlying causes of food insecurity include insufficient
availability of and/or access to land, inadequate management of natural resources,
lack of labour, water and agricultural inputs and/or information on appropriate
technologies, in urban areas the major cause is lack of income, and thus no access to
food. Social networks, considered of high importance for food security in rural
areas, are generally weaker in urban areas, especially in neighborhoods with high
numbers of new migrants. More or less formal safety nets, organized at municipal
level, are lacking.
Nutrition transition
The trend of continued urbanization leads to changes in dietary patterns and in
lifestyle. A diet richer in (saturated) fats, animal products, sugars and alcohol and
lower in complex carbohydrates and fibres, accompanied by a lifestyle that favours
use of convenience products (because of lack of time to prepare food) and requires
less physical activity, leads to higher prevalence of obesity. In many developing
countries, starting in the higher socio-economic classes, this is, indeed, a sign of
wealth.
However, in various other countries obesity is increasingly becoming a problem
of the less wealthy: often the cheaper food products contain the least healthy food
components, and the lower socio-economic groups have the least information on
healthy diets. Obesity often does not come on its own: it predisposes to chronic non-
communicable and diet-related diseases such as diabetes (type 2), cardiovascular
diseases, and even to some forms of cancer. Some middle-income countries or
certain groups in low- or middle-income countries show rates of obesity that match
those of the USA (South African and Egyptian women, Mexico, Indonesia,