The share of obese Kenyans continues to rise, alongside the number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet, a new report on nutrition shows.
It indicates 7.1 per cent of Kenyan adults are obese, compared to 5.9 per cent in 2012.
The report further indicates that nearly 81 per cent of all Kenyans cannot afford a healthy diet, of about Sh243 daily. So people result to cheap carbohydrates that make them obese.
The figures are contained in the 2022 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, which notes that 43 million Kenyans today eat unbalanced food every day.
The rates for Kenya are within the average for Africa, where 85 per cent of people do not eat a balanced diet, according to the report.
A balanced diet contains foods from the following groups-fruits, vegetables, dairy, cereals and protein.
The report suggests that national food security policies are designed mainly to ensure the availability of staple cereals such as maize and beans, or rice, for Kenya.
However, this is insufficient for meeting other dietary requirements, including adequate macronutrients and micronutrients and a diverse intake of foods that help prevent malnutrition in all its forms, as well as diet-related non-communicable diseases.
“The share of the total cost of staple foods in a healthy diet is, on average, only 15 per cent of its total cost,” the report says.
It says the majority of the poor in every region and country around the world can actually afford the cereals to meet their daily dietary energy requirement.
But they cannot afford the rest that makes food balanced.
It partially blames infrastructure for the shortage of perishable foods such as vegetables and fruits, required for a balanced diet.
This typically leads to waste and post-harvest losses.
“In Africa, losses for non-perishable crops typically range between 1.3 and 7.3 per cent, while post-harvest losses for tomatoes, in Kenya, were around 28 per cent,” the report says.
It was jointly published last week by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Unicef, the UN World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.
Ifad president Gilbert Houngbo said,“These are depressing figures for humanity. We continue to move away from our goal of ending hunger by 2030. The ripple effects of the global food crisis will most likely worsen the outcome again next year.”
Globally, the report shows almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019, reflecting the effects of inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it.
An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, which increases children’s risk of death by up to 12 times.
Furthermore, 149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight.
Progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 per cent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020.
This is still short of the 50 per cent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.
Edited by A.N
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