Malnutrition might not be a problem you'd necessarily associate with the western world, but increasingly, unhealthy diets are leaving people overweight and undernourished.  Damien O'Reilly spoke with Laurence Haddad, the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition at the Forum for the Future of Agriculture to find out more about the situation facing us.  Laurence said,

"In the western world it's a massive problem…  In the UK, almost 30% of the population is obese and that's really shocking.  Next week, there's going to be a sugar levy introduced by the UK government.  The aim is to reduce sugar consumption, so it's a big problem.  No one has a monopoly on the problem and no one has a monopoly on the solution."

Laurence says the problem is not so much that we've become less knowledgeable about the food that we eat, but that the environment around us has become increasingly conducive to making unhealthy choices.

"The barriers to eating nutritious food are very complicated…  I go back to my home town in East London and I see the high street is full of fast food joints, cheap food, there's no fruit or vegetables anywhere to be found so it's about the food environment.  How easy is it to make a healthy choice?  That has been driven by commerce because it's actually easier to produce and store and market and sell foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat.  They just have a better shelf life.  Fresh foods which are high in micronutrients don't have a good shelf-life." 

Damien also spoke to chef and commentator JP McMahon who feels education is key to finding a balance, but also that we need to help businesses that are promoting healthy food choices.

"It's a very difficult problem and it think it's only getting worse.  The last time I saw a survey I think over 45% of the food consumed in Ireland and England was ultra-processed…  Not only do you have high levels of fat, salt and sugar but the food has been processed to within an inch of its life and it's modified in a lot of different ways…  There is more than we can do.  For me, the primary thing is about getting a food subject into schools…  That is only 50% of the problem, possibly a food subject, possibly trying to help commerce to produce shops that would probably be subsidized."

Click here to listen to that discussion in full.