UNICEF’s ‘Fed to Fail?’ Report- Highlights

WHY IN THE NEWS?

UNICEF released its new report titled “Fed to fail? The crisis of children’s diets in early life”.

About:

• According to the report, Children aged under 2 are not getting the food or nutrients they need to thrive and grow well. This is leading to irreversible developmental harm.
• The report warns that rising poverty, conflict, inequality, climate-related disasters, and health emergencies like COVID-19 pandemic, are contributing to the nutrition crisis among those children.
• Poor nutritional intake in the first two years of life can harm the rapidly growing bodies and brains of the children. It also impacts their schooling, job prospects and futures. But there has been little progress towards providing right kind of nutritious and safe foods for them.
• While conducting the analysis across 91 countries, the report finds that, half of children aged 6-23 months are getting minimum recommended number of meals in a day.
• One third of the children consume the minimum number of food groups they need to grow.

Impact of Covid-19

COVID-19 pandemic still continues to disrupt the essential services and is driving more families into poverty. According to the report, pandemic is also affecting how families feed their children. In several countries, families have been forced to reduce the purchases of nutritious food. Because of this, percentage of children consuming minimum recommended number of food groups reduced by a third in 2020 as compared to 2018.

Vulnerability of Children

Children aged under two are most vulnerable to all forms of malnutrition like wasting, stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity. As per UNICEF estimates, more than half of children aged under 5 are vulnerable to wasting, globally.