Nothing should come more naturally than good nutrition. Like breathing, drinking water and sleeping, it is essential to survival. It should be programmed into everything we do and should not require a second thought. Our biological and social systems should be designed to deliver this most essential function, effortlessly.



Yet, far from being taken for granted, nutrition preoccupies the thoughts of hundreds of millions of people every day. Poor nutrition or malnutrition in one form or another affects one in three (pdf) of us. No country is immune. Nutrition is a daily obsession for those suffering acute hunger – undernutrition in its most visible form. It’s also a daily obsession for millions concerned with obesity and weight loss.

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Nutrition should be high on the agenda for global leaders gathering this month in New York to finalise the sustainable development goals (SDG). These new targets are designed to spur collective action to end poverty, improve health, protect the environment, promote justice and equality, and expand prosperity. These are laudable goals, reflecting an international consensus tested over three years of debate. But adopting the goals is only a prelude to the far more difficult task of implementing them. Business as usual will fail to deliver transformational change.

The problem is that progress in aid projects and social programmes is too often hampered by practices based on accumulated habits rather than on evidence of what actually works. As a result, we reach fewer people at higher cost. This problem is evident in the fight against malnutrition, one of the aspects of poverty that is simplest to understand but hardest to crack.

Nutrition is a great example of a giant blind spot, where we ignore what we know works. This matters because poor nutrition is wrecking lives. We’re paying a heavy price. Not only in terms of illness and death, but in low productivity and high healthcare costs.

Nutrition is a great example of a giant blind spot, where we ignore what we know works. Poor nutrition wrecks lives

Globally, 161 million children are chronically undernourished (pdf) and 51 million are severely undernourished. They are not receiving the right nutrients and healthcare. Undernourished children are more likely to be stunted or wasted – their bodies and brains have not grown or developed properly. As a result, they are less likely to escape poverty and chronic disease later in life. Worse still, undernutrition causes 3 million child deaths each year (pdf) that are entirely preventable. It’s another man-made catastrophe that we are failing to address.

Children with well-developed brains and bodies have better life chances. They live longer and healthier lives. They do better in school and they grow into healthy and productive adults. Estimated costs to countries show that a huge slice of economic output is lost to maternal and child undernutrition. For example in Malawi, the estimated cost of stunting is 10% of annual gross domestic product.

The 2015 global nutrition report released this week makes a powerful case for prioritising nutrition to help achieve the sustainable development goals. It also hammers home the importance of doing more of what we know works: reaching communities with high-impact nutrition interventions, implementing polices to create healthy food habits, and making better use of data to inform decisions.

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Good data really is the magic ingredient to ensure we have evidence of what actually works. Only good data can tell us where the problems are and where the money is going. Only by investing in data and evidence can we measure the impact of what we do. Without measurement, we are guessing. In the development sector, we should be horrified by how little basic data we have about most topics.

For nutrition, only 74 of 193 countries have sufficient data (pdf) on which to make a meaningful assessment of progress on five global maternal and child nutrition targets. So, 30 years on from the call to end hunger at Live Aid – and three years after UN member states signed up to World Health Assembly nutrition targets – less than half the world has the data to track progress.

We can meet the global goal of ending malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 if we increase political commitment and resources for nutrition, which includes investment in data. We know that with the right nutrition at the right time, every child has a chance to survive and thrive. And they deserve that.

• Michael Anderson is CEO of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and was previously the UK prime minister’s special envoy on UN development goals