Who'd have thunk it? I never would have guessed
'Malnutrition costs more than obesity'
Published: Thursday 23 November 2006 | Updated: Friday 24 November 2006
With current policy focus on obesity and decreasing our daily intake of fat, sugar and salt - malnutrition is often forgotten or under-recognised. However, experts say malnourished elderly citizens cost the EU more than obesity.
Background:
Malnutrition is a medical condition caused by inadequate or insufficient diet (imbalance of energy, protein, and other nutrients) which can cause measurable adverse effects on the health of individuals. In wealthy societies malnutrition, mineral and nutrient deficiencies, is a particular problem of older people.
The issue of malnutrition was discussed for the first time at EU level during the Dutch presidency in September 2004. A follow-up conference on the issue took place under the British EU presidency conference in September 2005.
The Commission's Green paper on healthy diets and physical activity and the EU's Diet, Physical Activity and Health platform do not address the issue of malnutrition. However, there are a number of EU-funded research project in the field of nutrition and healthy ageing that address the issue of malnutrition in older people.
In 2003, the Council of Europe (CoE) committee of ministers adopted a resolution on food and nutritional care in hospitals.
Issues:
In a conference on 'From Malnutrition to Wellnutrition', on 22 November 2006, stakeholders from around Europe discussed ways to pull the issue of malnutrition higher up on the EU agenda. The participants defined actions aimed to build awareness and recognition of the problem especially in the community context, nursing homes and hospitals.
"It is clear that action needs to be taken at national level," said Frank de Man, secretary general of the European Nutrition for Health Alliance (ENHA). "The Commission can naturally help us in raising awareness about malnutrition at EU level," he added.
"A UK study on the economic costs of malnutrition suggests that malnutrition costs the UK €10.5 billion a year. If we extrapolate these figures in Europe the annual cost of malnutrition amounts to some €60 billion in the EU only," said Jean-Pierre Baeyens, chair of ENHA. These costs come from more frequent hospitalisations and longer hospital stays as recovery takes more time. "Health costs could be cut down by 20% in the EU if the issue of malnutrition was resolved," added Baeyens, who would like the EU Health Commissioner Kyprianou to put forward a Green paper on malnutrition to set it on the EU policy agenda.
Concrete actions include weighting people when they enter hospitals or nursing homes, and regularly after, to monitor their weight. Another would be to introduce adequate education on nutrition into the curricula of healthcare and social care professionals.
Positions:
The Council of Europe Committee of experts on nutrition, food safety and consumer health states that "in all European countries it is an established fact that disease-related hospital undernutrition is reaching significant levels (20-50%) which may result in increased length of hospital stay, medical complications and consequently increased suffering and economic costs."
The European Older People's Platform (AGE) "regrets that the Commission's Communication on promoting healthy diets and physical activity only takes into account obesity as being part of an unhealthy diet completely neglecting malnutrition as a part of a poor nutrition. The Green paper fails to address such an important factor i.e. the insufficiency of the micronutrients and minerals that are needed to meet the functional and psychological needs of any individual."
AGE therefore urges the Commission "to take action and develop nutritional and physical programmes not only targeting children but also older people and to measure the benefits (short and long term) of such interventions."
Latest & next steps:
The Commission will adopt a White paper on EU health strategy in June 2007.
Obesity versus malnutrition
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