Question

how do the following factors contribute to malnutrition; poverty, lack of education, disease and environmental factors. How can food assistance programs help alleviate these issues?

Answer 1

Poverty, lack of education, disease and environmental factors contributes to malnutrition.

Poverty : Poor economic conditions of a family or a societey makes them suffer to reach their needs of the food on daily basis.Also they could not consume highly nutrient rich foods which leads to malnutrition.

Lack of Education : This is also one of the reason for malnutrition because,families whose parents do not have an idea of foods which are rich in nutrients and also efficient methods of cooking cannot give good food to the children thus leading to malnutrition.

Environmental conditions : In some scenarios though family is providing rich food, some environmental factors such as work stress, lack of concentration, school surroundings and family environment in case of children also disturbs them and this leads to avoiding of food thus resulting in malnutrition.

Food assistance programmes such as

• Midday meal programme
• Nutritional programmes

provides or supplies adequate nutrients in a single meal which helps to avoid malnutrition.This also encourages to consume more amount of nutrients.