Humans Nutrition

In 18 Asian countries for whice data are availiable, food supply in terms of total average of calories per capita per day for the triennium 1978-80 is compared with normative requirements and is given in the Table2. From the Table it can be seen that in aggregate tems the food supply in 11 Asian countries is very near or has exceeded their requirements’levels. For the remaining countries on the basis of overall availability, the food supply is short of the normative requirements.

The above analysis is on the basis of food supply whice in each country is assumed to be shared on unifrom basis.

This, of course, is far from the actual reality. In most countries, there is considerable uneven distribution of food because of the unven distribution of the purchasing power. Along with short falls in overall food supply , the unven distribution of available food, primarily gives rise to undernutrition. There is no universal agreement on the magnitude of undernutrition in Asia;however,the fact remains that the extent of undernutrition in several developing countries of Asia in significant.

Future tasks

For solving nutritional problems in Asia, broadly speaking, the future tasks can be grouped under the following categories: 1) acceleration of food production through enhanced productivity in agriculture, 2) reduction of instsbility in production, 3) introduction of greater equity in food distrsbution arrangements, 4) introduction of nutritional considerations in agricultural planning. Each of these aspects are dealt with below.