Explain the Economics in Nutrition?
We mentioned earlier that nutritional problems affect the productivity of the individual, which, in turn affects the productivity of the nation. This results in a great loss for the nation. Many factors influence the nutritional state of an individual community e.g. amount of food production, food storage, food pricing, subsidies, food distribution, targeted public distribution, government policies etc. You would be surprised to know that over the past three decades, the world has produced more grain per capita but yet in any given year of that recent history, several million people have died from hunger-related, causes.
On any given day, perhaps a billion individuals are restricted by their economic circumstances to consume less food than they would like, and hundreds or millions have their growth and physical activity limited by inadequate food consumption. Therefore, planning the food resources adequately can largely prevent malnutrition. Ensuring equitable distribution of the available rood resources is a multisectoral challenge. The discipline of 'nutritional economics' hence tries to analyze this relationship, so that the existing food resources can be used efficiently.