UN nutrition conference opens

Meeting in Rome Wednesday, organizations and health, food and agriculture ministers from 170 countries committed to battling poor nutrition. Deficiencies caused 45 percent of all child deaths in 2013

About 805 million people suffer from hunger. At the same time, about 42 million children under age 5 have become overweight, and some 500 million adults weighed in obese in 2010, UN figures show. In all, about a third of the world's population is improperly nourished.

The voluntary guidelines adopted at the start of the three-day UN International Conference on Nutrition ask governments to protect consumers from "inappropriate marketing and publicity of food" to reduce obesity levels. Governments also pledged to invest more in nutrition programs, encourage breast-feeding, and develop farming policies that promote sustainable, safe and nutritious diets. Some experts have recommended supplements to replace missing nutrients.

'Multiple burdens'

Food and Agriculture Organization head Jose Graziano da Silva said that obesity hadn't sat high on the UN's agenda when governments had last pledged to fight malnutrition - at a conference 22 years ago. However, he added that, though the global undernourished population has dropped, "many developing countries, especially middle income countries, are facing the multiple burdens of malnutrition simultaneously: undernourishment, hidden hunger and obesity." Da Silva said that ending malnutrition would require balancing interests between producers and consumers and for the private sector to work with governments and legislators to promote healthy diet policies.

The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that hunger had fallen 21 percent since the 1992 conference and also that people living in the same, formerly famished communities - and, nowadays, even members of the same household - suffer variously from hunger, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity. These abundances and deficiencies account for 10 percent of diseases and disabilities. On Wednesday, WHO Director General Margaret Chan told the delegates in Rome that social and income inequality and gaps between people's nutrition levels had hit their highest recorded point.

"Something is wrong," Chan said. "Part of our out-of-balance world still starves to death and other parts stuff itself into a level of obesity so widespread that it is pushing life expectancy figures backward and pushing the cost of health care to astronomical figures," she added.

The nutrition conference runs through Friday. Pope Francis will address attendees on Thursday.

mkg/msh (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)