A Global Crisis

1. Hidden Hunger
A Global Crisis
March 2012

2. Hidden Hunger affects more than two
billion people. Even when a person
consumes adequate calories and protein, if
they lack one single micronutrient - or a
combination of vitamins and minerals -
their immune system is compromised, and
disease takes hold.
World Hunger Series 2007 - Hunger and Health
World Food Programme

3. There is a global nutrition crisis, with
a dual problem of hunger and obesity
 Myth #1 - The escalation of food
insecurity makes it imperative to
maximise agricultural yields
 Myth #2 - The escalation of obesity
makes it imperative to promote a
balanced diet

4. Nutrients
 The human body needs sufficient
nutrients for optimum health
 On a daily basis, we require
 17 minerals
 14 vitamins
 9 amino acids
 2 fatty acids

5. Over tens of thousands of years,
human beings developed sustainable
ways to feed themselves:
 Preservation of topsoil
 Crop rotation
 Natural fertilisers
 Locally grown, seasonal fruit and
vegetables
 Fresh, free range meat, eggs and milk
 Freshly cooked, nutritious meals

6. 1889

7. 1919

8. It was no different in Southern Africa,
where people had less money than
they have today:
 Millet, sorghum and – more recently -
maize, grown and milled at home
 Ground nuts, sweet potato, pumpkin,
cabbage
 Gathering herbs, roots, shoots, fruits and
wild spinach
 Moderate intake of fresh, free range meat,
eggs and milk

10. Kalahari Bushmen

11. Beware Scientific Reductionism
 Justus von Liebig (1803 – 1873)
 Myth #3 - Healthy plant growth
depends only on the correct balance of
NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and
Potassium) – Death of Sustainable
Agriculture
 Myth #4 - Healthy human growth
depends only on the correct balance of
Protein, Carbohydrate and Fat – Death
of Good Nutrition

12. Wartime Rationing

13. Wartime Rationing 1940-1954
 Very little meat, fat, eggs or sugar
 2 ounces (50g) of butter per week
 One egg per fortnight
 The ‘National Loaf’ – wholegrain
 Home-grown vegetables - 'Dig For Victory'
 An apple a day keeps the doctor away
 Children were allocated milk, cod-liver oil and orange juice
 Schoolchildren had a weekly dose of malt extract
 Most people were better fed during wartime food rationing
than before the war years
 Infant mortality rates declined
 Average age at which people died from natural causes
increased

14. California 1950

15. Hidden Hunger
 In contrast, the science of nutrition is less
than 150 years old, and the ‘best
evidence’ keeps shifting.
 In the early 1960s, the medical advice
was
 Myth #5 - High protein (animal best)
 Low carbohydrate (unspecified)
 Low fat (Myth #6 - Traditional margarine
healthier than butter)
 No supplements (expensive urine)

16. Hidden Hunger
 Today, the medical advice is
 Myth #7 - 5 fruit and veg
 Moderate unrefined carbohydrate
 Moderate protein
 Low fat (but omegas essential)
 Modern margarine healthier than butter
 Traditional margarine (trans fats) extremely
bad
 No supplements

17. Modern farming methods have
conspired to maximise yields at the
expense of nutrient content:
 Deep ploughing
 NPK fertilisers
 Pesticides & Fungicides
 Monoculture
 GM crops
 Hydroponics
 Early harvesting & Artificial ripening
 Factory farming
 Storage & Transport

18. Today, our food contains a fraction of
the essential micronutrients it
contained 100 years ago
The Food Industry has compounded
this problem by:
 Refining
 Milling
 Processing
 Additives
 Extensive use of sugar, corn syrup and
hydrogenated oils (trans fats)

19. Influence of Milling on Vitamin &
Mineral Content of Maize
Wholegrain Milled % Loss
(μg/g) (μg/g)
Vitamin A 0 0 0
Vitamin B1 - Thiamine 4.7 1.3 72.3
Vitamin B2 - Riboflavine 0.9 0.4 55.6
Vitamin B3 - Niacin 16.2 9.8 39.5
Vitamin B6 - Pyridoxine 5.4 1.9 64.8
Vitamin E 0 0 0
Folate 0.3 0.1 66.7
Biotin 0.073 0.014 80.8
Calcium 30.8 14.5 52.9
Phosphorus 3100 800 74.2
Zinc 21 4.4 79.0
Iron 23.3 10.8 53.6

20. Feeding People what Rodents
Reject
Sammy eats the maize germ, where the cereal fat
and micronutrients are found.
Human beings refine out the nutrient rich maize
germ and eat the sterile remains.

21. Sugar – A Natural Food – Myth #8
 Every human cell can use glucose, but only the
liver can metabolise fructose
 It turns it into fat. Fructose increases:
 Blood lipid levels – triglyceride, total and LDL
cholesterol
 The prevalence of type 2 diabetes,
hypertension, abnormal blood clotting and
heart disease
 Teenage males in the US consume 34 teaspoons
per day - 25% of total calorie intake

22. Positive energy balance
DoH ’98, USDA ’02, NIH ’03, NCHS ‘04
1940 50 60 70 80
What we eat
What we need

23. The result is a global pandemic of
Hidden Hunger (Type B
Malnutrition)
which afflicts
the hungry and the obese

24. Sheffield 1887

29. Hardee’s ‘Monster Thickburger’
1420 calories, 107g fat: $5.49

30. Sheffield 2007

31. There is an explosion in the prevalence
of chronic degenerative disease:
 Obesity & Diabetes
 Hypertension & Heart disease
 Mental Illness & Dementia
 Impaired immunity
 Cancer
 TB
 Asthma
 Arthritis
Myth #9 - We are living longer
Few of us are living more healthily

32. Obesity
 22.1% of men and 22.8%
of women in England are
clinically obese
 In 1998, there were over
18 million days of
medically certified sickness
absence attributable to
obesity
 Obesity is estimated to
cost the NHS at least £2.5
billion per year

33. Diabetes
 Diabetes accounts for 9% of
the total NHS budget, a total
of £5.2 billion a year
 It is estimated that 56% of
this expenditure could be
saved through modifications
to people’s diet and activity
levels
 By 2020 diabetes will
account for 25% of the
health budget.

34. Coronary Heart Disease
 CHD is the most common cause of death in
the UK
 The estimated total cost of CHD to the UK
economy is £7.9 billion per year

35. Hidden Hunger
 In SA, today, the staples are
 Refined maize meal (empty calories)
 Bread (mostly refined)
 White sugar (empty calories)
 Soft drinks
 Sweets
 Most processed foods
 Traditional margarine (trans fats)
 Cooking oil

37. In the Third World, fortification of
depleted staple foods has become
commonplace:
 Myth #10 - We can get essential
micronutrients from chemicals added to our
food
 They are often toxic
 They are poorly absorbed
 They rarely act in the body in the way intended
 With the exceptions of iodine and folic acid,
this has not been achieved

38. Why Fortification Fails
 The electrolytic iron used has a bioavailability of
less than 2%
 Phytates in maize block the absorption of iron,
zinc, calcium and magnesium
 Electrolytic iron oxidizes the vitamin A
 The vitamins are denatured and destroyed by
cooking
 The RDAs are based on adult, not child food
portions – which reduces the intake of the most
vulnerable

40. So What is Going Wrong?
 It is generally believed that all
vitamins and minerals come from
food
 And many health professionals
believe that different forms of
vitamins and minerals are the same
 But, both beliefs are wrong!

41. Nutrient Form
 Food
 The ideal, but our food is depleted of nutrients
 Food Form
 Food State or Re-Natured are vitamins and
minerals in a form as close as possible to food
 Amino Acid Chelates are minerals in a form
that the body accepts as food
 High bioefficacy and non-toxic
 Isolates
 Vitamins and minerals that are synthesised in
the laboratory
 Bioefficacy is low
 The vitamins are notoriously unstable

42. Vitamin C
 In the 1930s, Szent-Györgyi was awarded the
Nobel Prize for the discovery of Vitamin C
 He demonstrated that the active material in
paprika was ascorbic acid
 When, with repeated distillation, he extracted
crystalline ascorbic acid, he expected a strong
reaction
 But it did nothing - the concentrated whole foods
he had used in his research were far more effective
 Furthermore, ascorbic acid is excreted within 2
hours of ingestion, whilst vitamin C in a food form
is retained for 48 hours or longer

43. Forms of Selenium
Form IC50
Selenium Yeast 3.0 μM
Selenomethionine 52.8 μM
Blank Yeast > 100 μM (Not an Antioxidant)
Sodium Selenite > 1000 μM (Not an Antioxidant)
Inhibition Of LDL+VLDL Oxidation
By Different Forms of Selenium
Selenium is an important antioxidant. Where there
is deficiency, it has become commonplace to fortify
bread or salt with sodium selenate or selenite

44. Calcium
 Elephants - their skeletons are maintained
with the Calcium they get each day from
leaves and grass
 Pettifor showed that 30mg of Calcium in
Calcium-rich yeast is better absorbed than
300mg of Calcium Carbonate
 The former went to bone; the latter to
kidney
 Apparently, we are not designed to eat
chalk!

45. Comparing the Bioefficacy of Combined
Vitamin & Mineral Supplements

46. Abundant Evidence
 In 1999, Nobel Prize winner, Günter Blobel,
demonstrated that for vitamins and minerals to be
effectively absorbed into cells, they needed to be
associated with their plant carrier proteins.
 Recent work shows that USP vitamins and inorganic
minerals are sub-optimal delivery systems for the
micronutrients we need.
Dr Paul Clayton
 Isolating nutrients and trying to get benefits equal to
those of whole foods reveals an ignorance of how
nutrition works in the body. Relying on the use of
isolated nutrients to maintain health is not only a
waste of money, but potentially dangerous.
Prof T Colin Campbell
The China Study - 2005

47.  We are now bombarded with nutrition
guidelines that promote a balanced diet:
 MyPlate
 5-a-Day (fruit & veg)
 Traffic light labelling (fat, sugar & salt)
 Some believe that Organic and Free
Range are best
 All these guidelines assume that our food
contains the nutrients we need for health
 But 5-a-Day won’t cut it. Nor will 10!

48. Five-a-Day
 We should be getting a minimum of 5 fruit
and vegetables in our diet every day
 In the UK, people are only getting half of that
(2.7 portions on average in 2008)
 16-25 year olds, on average, get only a
quarter of what they need (1.3 portions)
 Some people eat none at all

49. Antioxidant Comparison of Plant and Animal foods
Nutrient: 500 Cal Plant Based Animal Based
Cholesterol mg 0 137
Fat mg 4000 36000
Protein mg 33000 34000
Beta Carotene mg 29.9 0.017
Dietary Fibre mg 31000 0
Vitamin C mg 293 4
Folate mg 1.17 0.004
Vitamin E mg 11 0.5
Iron mg 20 2
Magnesium mg 548 51
Calcium mg 545 252
These nutrients are universally acknowledged as vital to protect against cancers of all kinds
Plant Based Foods = Equal parts of tomatoes, spinach, lima beans, potatoes and peas
Animal Based Foods = Equal parts of beef, pork, chicken and whole milk

50. Our Poor Nutritional Status
 Nutrient deficiencies afflict every group of our
population
 The greatest deficiencies are among those
who need the most (the young, the elderly
and pregnant women)
 Sub-optimal intake of vitamins and minerals
is prevalent in every group
 All groups failed to meet the recommended
intake of omega 3

51. A Call to Action
 Remunerate producers on the nutritional
content of the food they produce
 Eat fresh, local and seasonal
 Stop refining grain
 Ban trans fats
 Reduce sugar, fat and salt consumption
 Traffic light label all processed foods
 Stop believing that we can correct
micronutrient deficiencies by adding these
to food in the form of chemical isolates

52. Thank You for Your Interest
Health Empowerment Through Nutrition is a
UK Registered Charity concerned with the
alleviation of Hidden Hunger
www.hetn.org