222 Community Food Security
Nutrition and food security
When people are sick or malnourished, they are less
active and less able to produce food, carry water, and
maintain a clean home and a healthy environment.
But when healthy foods are affordable, produced in
a sustainable way, and available in local markets,
people have access to a varied and healthy diet.
Not eating well can weaken the body and cause:
• severe diarrhea, especially in children.
• childhood measles to become more dangerous.
• dangerous pregnancies and births, and babies
born too small or with disabilities such as slow
mental development.
• anemia, especially for women.
• tuberculosis to be more common, and get worse
more quickly.
Dry malnutrition:
this child is just
skin and bones
• diabetes, a disease caused when the body cannot
use sugar properly, to be more common.
• minor problems like colds to be more frequent,
and often more severe, leading to pneumonia and
bronchitis.
• people with HIV or AIDS to get sicker more
quickly, and their medicines to not work as well.
• silicosis, asthma, heavy metal poisoning, and other
problems caused by contact with toxic chemicals
(see Chapters 16 and 20) to be more common
and more severe.
Malnourished children grow slowly and learn poorly
in school, or are too weak to go to school.
Wet malnutrition:
this child is just skin and
bones and water
Malnutrition is particularly a problem for young children and must be
treated immediately. To learn more about these health problems, and about
how good nutrition can prevent them, see a general medical book such as
Where There Is No Doctor.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012