People in third-world countries suffer from undernutrition. It’s a fact — everybody knows that Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Sudan, and Syria are among the worst hunger hotspots, and life-threatening hunger is on the rise.
However, what people don’t seem to get is that poverty doesn’t manifest solely as undernutrition. In fact, more and more people in western countries suffer from overnutrition, which is another form of malnutrition that we forget to associate with low economic means.
Malnutrition is, according to NHS, not a condition that you’ll only see in slender people. Here’s why:
Malnutrition is a serious condition that happens when your diet does not contain the right amount of nutrients. It means “poor nutrition” and can refer to undernutrition — not getting enough nutrients. Overnutrition — getting more nutrients than needed.
If we historically associated plump bodies with food abundance, hence a sign of wealth, nowadays we know that such a body shape often results from poor lifestyle choices, which we shouldn’t blame on the people as we should on the economy and society at large.
