Understanding hunger | Devex

Understanding hunger | Devex: "“Now we’re looking at loss of life and loss of potential caused by unseen deficiencies — deficiencies taken for granted in so much of the developed world where people don’t need to know their foods are fortified with nutrients in order to be saved by them,” he said.



 Food fortification has long benefited from a lack of awareness, Lomborg explained. People don’t need to know why — or by whom — their flour is enriched with folic acid and vitamin A in order to see neural tube defects in newborns reduced by 30 percent over a single generation. Likewise, in only a few decades, 91 million children were protected against iodine deficiency, and not because consumers changed their habits, according to a study by UNICEF. Meanwhile, the fortification of cooking oil with vitamin A, which became mandatory in Indonesia in March, reduced vitamin A deficiency in infants and breast-feeding mothers without increasing the amount of cooking oil consumed.



 When governments make fortification mandatory, as they have in one form or another in 84 countries across the globe, advertising and awareness campaigns become less necessary — saving time and budgets, as well as lives."



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