According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 17% of the world’s population is underfed, with around 25,000 people dying of malnutrition every day and a large concentration of malnourishment present in Southeast Asia. These figures seem hard to change and hide many causes and consequences. A sufficiently nutritious diet should provide, among other things, ions, vitamins or essential amino acids. A deficiency in one of these elements can trigger pathologies: an iron deficiency disturbs oxygen transport, or a vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness. [to re-write]
[give some numbers about malnutrition in India]
The FAO reports that more than half the adults have a BMI under 18.5 kg/m2 in the states of Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, due to malnutrition. The states of Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra Andhra Pradesh are also shown to have extremely poor nutritional status.
However, several studies reveal an improvement in the nutritional status of the Indian population in the last two decades. They are attributed by the FAO to socio-economic factors, increased availability of drinking water and improvement of health facility. The Global nutrition report 2014 also mentions nutrition-specific interventions, improved access to food and education, and diminution of poverty and fertility as key factors that have allowed child stunting to be reduced by 1/3 since 2006. But the situation is still dire.
In order to evaluate whether and how synthetic biology could help fighting malnutrition in this country, we researched the other solutions that have been proposed so far to reduce vitamin and iron deficiency, and examined their respective benefits and what obstacles and drawbacks they faced.
