What the Zero Hunger Program Does for Women, Children and Elders

Brazilians working on the Zero Hunger program realized that they needed to target their help to the ones most vulnerable (both socially and biologically) to hunger: children, pregnant women and the elders.

Many preschoolers were malnourished. "Food is not a material luxury. If people don't eat, they don't live," (This was a comment from Adriana Aranhas in the documentary The Silent Killer: the Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger).

The government provides three meals a day at all daycare centers, and this alone has helped to reduce children's mortality rate by 41% in Belo Horizonte. The grade schools give free lunches to the children in areas where hunger is prevalent. The city pays for the cost of the daycare lunches with a little help from the federal government.

They also have established a health center where mothers who come in for nutrition for their children are educated about making healthy eating choices. This includes learning how to make a nutrient-rich mixture of wheat bran, powdered eggshell, powdered manioc leaf and wheat flour.

The health center staff teaches the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables, of eating fewer products that contain chemicals and they also help people learn how to avoid waste when preparing food. Their belief is that it's not enough to just hand out food. They have to be educated to reinforce lasting healthy eating habits. Getting them involved at the health center in this way also helps keep them from losing contact with the mothers. Just handing out the nutrient rich mixture would not be enough to make a lasting change.

Another important change was made in the medical records area: all children who arrive at the health center and are underweight are considered victims of malnutrition. Previously, they were documented as victims of diarrhea or some other malnutrition-related disease. This change helps reflect malnutrition more accurately.

They also educate people on obesity that comes from eating too few whole grains and too few dark leafy vegetables which are rich in fiber, vitamins and vitamin complexes. They teach the women specific ways to include these types of food in their diet.

I talked with WIC director Mayte Grundseth of Forsyth County, and she says that WIC does one-on-one counseling with families, based on a nutritionist's analysis of how that family is at risk. WIC also has infant feeding classes, breastfeeding classes and will soon have classes on how to meet toddlers' needs. The parents are required to attend the first breastfeeding class, and that's the only class they're required to attend. Families can also access a nutritional education site online.

There is a farmer's market that comes to WIC two times in the summer. Grundseth says that the Health Center documents which children are underweight, but they do not document the cause of being underweight as "malnourished". The big news with WIC is that they're going to get vouchers for fresh fruit and vegetables this fall. They can use these vouchers at farmer's markets or at grocery stores. But they can't use the vouchers at farmer's markets unless the produce is grown in the same county the person lives in. This is a big problem, because very few farmers actually grow food in Forsyth County. Most of it comes from surrounding counties. These vouchers come from the USDA.

WFU researcher Sara Quandt is currently researching food accessibility to grocery stores and restaurants for impoverished people in our county.

Questions:
--How close is our center to the people who are malnourished?
--Investigate other agencies (such as the YWCA, Goodwill Industries, Imprints and Salvation Army) to see if they offer education classes about nutrition

Ideas of how we can get involved:
--Write the USDA and see if we can get the policy changed about the vouchers used at farmer's markets being restricted to food grown in just one county
--Have various agencies teach mothers a nutrient-rich infant formula they could make on their own, similar to the one in Brazil
--Find out more about what's being done and what's not being done in our area in comparison to what Brazil is doing for the nutritional health of mothers, children and the elderly.
--see if we can get a farmer's market started at some of the other agencies like Goodwill, around the time that classes are being held for women and the elderly (and even have the farmers teach one of the classes)