Hi all!
Today we're going to discuss food insecurity and the importance of microgreens in tackling this.
Our current understanding of food insecurity is having a lack of reliable access to affordable and nutritious food. With economic and socio-political factors impacting rates of poverty, in conjunction to climatic extremities affecting food production and therefore distribution, over 800 million people have subsequently been subjected to chronic undernourishment. Malnutrition, a direct cause of food insecurity which is defined as a condition where one’s diet does not contain the right amount of nutrients has thus become a major issue that we face globally.
Whilst the premise of food insecurity affects individuals on an international scale, less economically developed areas that suffer from high rates of poverty experience malnutrition at substantially elevated levels, this has been evident in countries such as Uganda. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification for Karamoja, 361,000 people in North-eastern Uganda have been estimated to experience high rates of acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse. Districts such as Kaabong, Kotido, and Moroto have been particularly affected. The Kaabong district is the most impacted, with both prominent levels of food insecurity and acute malnutrition levels at 18.6%. Malnutrition therefore poses a major threat to the children of Uganda, where over one third of all young children suffer from stunted growth to 50% of children under the age of five and 25% of child-bearing-age suffering from anaemia. With the current global population being estimated at 7.7 billion people, and a projected increase to 9.8 billion by 2050, the number individuals lacking access to reliable and sustainable sources of nutritious food, will inevitably increase. This notion conveys the need to develop initiatives that will alleviate problems stemming from food insecurity and malnutrition in countries such as Uganda, further preventing people suffering from serious health issues and in many cases death.
We at Nutrigreens have therefore made it our mission to tackle malnutrition in school children in Uganda by promoting the growth and use of microgreens. Microgreens are seedlings of edible vegetables and herbs that have been shown to contain nutrients, such as vitamins, C, E, and K, lutein, and beta-carotene at a level 40 times greater than the mature leaves of the same plants. As these vegetables are more nutritionally dense and require 150 times less water to be grown than their counter parts, we believe that microgreens will aid in the mitigation of malnutrition and establishment of food security in Uganda and hopefully in other countries. Whilst Nutrigreens and many more organisations are currently aiming to prevent the accumulation of malnutrition, the integration of food security globally will require the development of further enterprises and technologies, with additional importance being placed on governments tackling the issue of poverty and other economic matters.
We hope to reach a point in the future where countless lives are no longer lost due to the consumption of diets lacking in enough nutrients and advance to a stage where individuals can access food to sustain the healthy lifestyle they are entitled to live.
If you would like to find out more, follow the links to the valuable sources used:
Stay green!
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