In 2019, 19-year-old girls in Nepal were the third shortest in the world, found a recent study by the journal The Lancet that ranked 200 countries.
That’s not simply a genetic thing: ‘Nepalis are short’. A third of adolescent boys and girls in Nepal — 1.8 million — are stunted, or too short for their age. Others are too thin for their age, or wasted. These various forms of undernutrition contribute to 25,000 child deaths in Nepal each year, or 52 per cent of child deaths, more than any other cause, says UNICEF. The impacts of these various types of malnutrition can last life-long. Stunted children do less well at school and are less productive as adults. They are also more likely to suffer from diet-related non-communicable diseases later in life, such as diabetes and chronic heart disease.
In 2019, three days before 1,200 nutrition experts from around the world met at the Scaling Up Nutrition conference in Kathmandu, a new initiative was launched to fight malnutrition in Nepal. But Baliyo Nepal soon became controversial when it was revealed that the organization was created by the Chaudhary Group, makers of Wai Wai instant noodles, widely recognized as junk food. Though the company denied that one of Baliyo Nepal’s plans was to fortify Wai Wai noodles to make them more healthy, a prominent advisor, nutritionist Aruna Uprety, quit the project days later.
Today, Baliyo Nepal — ‘baliyo’ meaning mighty or strong — is forging ahead with a pilot project in Lumbini Province. Covid-19 has slowed its plans to launch a ‘baliyo’ basket of nutrition-rich foods, CEO Atul Upadhyay tells us in this episode. He also addresses the criticism that the non-profit company’s focus on engaging the private sector to fight malnutrition is misdirected.
Resources
The Lancet article on height of the world's children
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