Child Development and Public Health

Nutrition/Malnutrition

With so many fast food joints, dense schedule of working, unhealthy food becomes the order of the day in the developing countries. Malnutrition beginning in infancy and continuing through early childhood contributes to the one-third of all child death (UNICEF, 2008, and slows later growth, including growth of the brain). Nowadays we see a lot of obsessed children in developed countries because of their customs of eating a lot of sugary things and their parents just can’t say no to their children over having certain food items, and that causes more harm than good to the children’s health. Studies and researches have shown that an epidemic of heart diseases and diabetes is spreading worldwide as overfed children become overweight adults.

Although high number of children eat more than just enough calories, most of the essential nutrients are left out of their diet for example, iron, zinc and calcium because the now drink less milk and a lot of fizzy drinks. With the generational in life styles in developed country, we see a lot of obsessed children due to lack of exercise compared to the way their parents and grandparents did by feeding animals, walking miles to school and playing outside. With a lot of technological advancement you see a lot of children playing indoors as against what their parents and grandparents did.

This topic is meaningful to me because of the effects of nutrition/malnutrition in the developing child. When we talk about development what come to the mind are the three domains of development which includes, biosocial, cognitive and psychosocial. For a child to be well-rounded, that child’s nutrition should be placed as number one priority before other functions will take place while underweight causes a lot of malfunctions in the human body, overweight causes a lot of social damage to the growing child. Obsessed children are bullied more often even if they possess qualities that can discourage bullies, such as having social skills or doing well in school, this can eventually make them sad and depressed eventually.

Malnutrition is a very big problem in Nigeria, with its constituents of protein-energy malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies continue to be a major health burden in developing countries. It is globally the most important risk factor for illness and death with hundreds of millions of pregnant women and young children particularly affected. Apart from marasmus and kwashiorkor (the 2 forms of protein-energy malnutrition), deficiencies in iron, iodine, vitamin A and zinc are the manifestations of malnutrition in developing countries.

I believe this information may impact my future work in the sense that I now know the implication of both nutrition/malnutrition as regards to the health and wellbeing of young children whether it has to do with underweight or overweight.