Poverty and a lack of nutritional education are to blame for the unhealthy diets of millions of people across the world, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declared on Tuesday in Rome.

"To be food secure, families need sufficient resources to produce or purchase adequate food," said FAO Nutrition Officer Peter Glasauer, "but people also need an understanding of what constitutes an appropriate diet for good health, and they must have the skills and motivation to make the best food choice available to them."

He stressed that nutritional education was key to developing the skills and motivation needed to eat well, adding that it was especially important in situations where families had limited resources. He also said that it was in those same low-income situations that the challenge of providing nutritional education was often the greatest.

A lack of trained personnel, coupled with a shortage of libraries, books, guidelines, internet connections and other sources of information, made educating people about nutrition a formidable challenge. But meeting this challenge was essential if progress was to be made on the global commitment to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the FAO official indicated.

Fundamentally, the MDGs were about improving the health and welfare of the poor, and in most instances this could not occur without improvements in nutrition, Glasauer said. As part of its global efforts to strengthen nutritional education activities, the FAO has distributed a large amount of educational material around countries across the world.

The Family Nutrition Guide published by the FAO helps governments and non-governmental organizations to inform and motivate people to adopt healthy diets and lifestyles throughout their lives, the official said.

Improving access to adequate food and promoting better dietary intakes were central activities in the FAO's drive to reduce the number of hungry and malnourished people around the world, thus helping achieve the goal of the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals, the FAO chief said.

Source: Xinhua