Junk Food Spreading Malnutrition, Stunted Growth in Pacific Isles

Rapid modernization and the glitter of Western consumerism are causing deaths across the islands of the Pacific of scores of children wooed by advertising to a junk-food diet.

Health officials say there is a rising trend of malnutrition on many Pacific islands.

This is not Africa, where thousands of people lack sufficient food. These are the islands of travel poster paradise--Fiji, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands--where local foods are plentiful.

But malnutrition is a growing menace. For every 10 children admitted to a hospital with severe malnutrition, health professionals believe there are 100 or more borderline cases who do not receive treatment.

The culprit, say health workers, is Westernization.

Islanders are jumping from a subsistence existence into urban centers where 90% of their food is bought in shops. Advertising, television, Western education and the consumer society all contribute to the problem.

Health workers say traditional foods have been supplanted by a diet of junk food--popular items include salty potato chips mixed with clam or onion dips, soft drinks, sweets and chocolate bars.

A visit to a pediatric ward in Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands, is a grim experience. Half a dozen children in various stages of malnutrition lie virtually motionless, attached to feeding and antibiotic intravenous tubes.

Children lacking protein and nutritious calories have puffy arms and legs, where fluid collects because there is not enough protein to distribute body liquids normally.

The faces of these children--between ages 1 and 5--are lackluster and vacant, almost expressionless except for a grimace or pain-induced snuffling. Many of them cannot even raise their own heads because they lack muscles.

Those with Vitamin A deficiency generally have at least one bandaged eye which doctors are attempting to save from blindness.

Toddlers who survive bouts of malnutrition may suffer brain damage and stunted physical growth.

“Malnutrition is a result of changing food habits,” says Peni Qioniwasa, a health worker with the UNICEF-sponsored Family Food Production and Nutrition Project in Fiji. “People who are employed are eating more from shops.”

Rural villagers who have leaped into the comparative maelstrom of urban life are often at risk of poor nutrition.

Stores with their rows of canned and packaged food have replaced the traditional “supermarket” of the islands--the ocean and the land--for a majority of the population. And the result is not encouraging.

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) health worker Teu Manuella of the tiny atoll republic of Tuvalu observes that people buy Western foods to gain status in their communities.

“Imported food is prestigious,” she said during a recent meeting in Majuro of health workers from across the Pacific region.

The Youth to Youth in Health--a peer education program in the Marshall Islands--performs a skit to confront misconceptions about local and imported “junk” foods.

In the skit, a farmer sells a big box of fresh fruits and vegetables to a young man for $10, then disappears into the grocery store to buy food for his family with his earnings. His choices? Cheese balls, chewing gum, soda and candy bars.

“All the good stuff,” he says.

It is a humorous sketch with a serious message: what people choose to feed their children can cause malnutrition. The message is beginning to get through, but the problem is daunting.

Fourteen children under 5 years of age died of malnutrition in one month alone last year in Majuro, said Dr. Neal Palafox, an American who is medical director for preventive services at the Ministry of Health.

Palafox pointed out that while most of the severely malnourished children die, borderline cases are susceptible to every illness circulating in the crowded urban centers from pneumonia to skin infections.