Malnutrition: The Silent Epidemic

[The Little Seed]

This documentation produced by PBS is an exploration of malnutrition in countries accepting help with their respective food crises. It is especially powerful because of images provided by photojournalists Jessica Dimmock and Ron Haviv, and because of the scary truth behind what government 'aid' is really providing. They discuss a corn/soy blend that has been provided in the past as a solution for hungry children. The problem is, while these foods offer a full stomach, they provide little to no nutritional value.
In fact, the irony here is that CORN products are primarily responsible for why we have such a battle with obesity in OUR country. More specifically, high fructose corn syrup and other derivatives of the corn-based sweetener. It's almost impossible to find processed foods that aren't sweetened with high fructose corn syrup these days. Our bodies cannot break down corn (the waxy texture is a dead giveaway for that), so the fact that we are cutting it out of our childrens' diet is important. This leads us to question, if we are cutting the low nutritionally valued food from our childrens' diet, why are we giving it to those in other countries? We want all of our children to be eating healthy and getting the proper nutrition they deserve, no matter what country they live in, don't we?

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/video/malnutrition-the-silent-... 'Doctors Without Borders and photojournalists from the agency VII traveled all around the world to document the silent epidemic of malnutrition -- not a lack of food, but a lack of the right kind of food. Need to Know on PBS discusses with Susan Shepherd of Doctors Without Borders how U.S. food aid, consisting mainly of a corn soy blend, does not give developing children in impoverished countries the nutrition they really need.'