News from the food front is disconcerting. At a time when this year's Global Nutrition Report paints a grim picture of nutritional deficiencies for a vast majority of the 140 countries surveyed, this is equally disturbing domestically for Bangladesh. Calorie intake by the population here has fallen. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), per capita intake dropped by 107.9 kilo-calorie (Kcal) to 2210.4 Kcal a day in 2016 from 2318.3 Kcal six years ago. In urban areas, the rate of drop in Kcal is even faster. The drop is mostly due to the consumption of significantly less rice and wheat -from 416.61 grams (gms) and 26 gms in 2010 to 367.19 gms and 19.83 gms respectively in 2016. Reduced intake of carbohydrate is not bad itself if the supplementary foods were there. Unfortunately, consumption of milk, milk products, fruits and vegetables also declined significantly over the period. However, the population ate more eggs, chicken and fish last year compared to 2010.
Dietary habits undergo changes over decades and centuries. Lower consumption of rice and wheat could be a most welcome change if only more nutritious foods with greater emphasis on fruits and vegetables could be added to people's meals here. Drop in Kilo calorie intake for urban population can be somewhat misleading if it is not analysed in its proper perspective. The perspective is that the rich and middle class people are unlikely to have sacrificed their calorie intake. It is the lower middle class and the poor living in urban areas, who are at a disadvantage. They can neither grow, like villagers, supplementary foods like fruits and vegetable on their rented house premises nor can afford the costly alternatives. The middle class people have to spend a substantial amount on their children's education.
Like the global population, Bangladesh nationals suffer from two or three critical forms of undernourishment-childhood stunting, anaemia in women of reproductive age and overweight in adult women. Childhood stunting is a direct cause of lack of nutrition of mothers during pregnancy and also poor diet and healthcare for babies. Its lifelong impact on physical and cognitive development deprives a nation of productive human resources. Spending on young women and children is an investment for a nation. Until or unless this is recognised in a country's budgetary policy, the nation has a recipe for continued underdevelopment. Attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the year 2030 may really suffer a setback unless this issue is taken care of now.
Again, for Bangladesh there is yet another less focussed issue concerning the retention of food quality. Boiled rice hardly retains the nutritious value when the liquid starch is allowed to seep out of the cooking pot. Similarly, processing of vegetables including washing after peeling those together with hard boiling render the dishes nutrition-poor. Proper processing can indeed improve the quality of foods. Last but not least, unhygienic preparation of foods is also responsible for frustrating the purpose of eating meals. Add to this the adulteration of food items by a section of dishonest traders, the picture becomes even more dismal. To make food safe and nutritious, there is a need for waging wars on all these fronts.