Tobacco causes causes of malnutrition in developing countries

Tufts UniversityThe latest survey conducted by Steven Block and Patrick Webb and others showed that tobacco is the cause of child malnutrition.

The influence of parent smoking on children is to mention passive smoking and children's easy to acquire smoking habits, but what does it mean to lead to malnutrition?

Details are as below.Smoking May Worsen Malnutrition In Developing Nations

According to this article, smoking will lead to malnutrition, as tobacco squeezes household expenses, and smokers have homes cut money on food and buy cigarettes. As a result, children in families with smokers tend to have a lower height than children who do not have smokers.

According to a survey conducted in the countryside of Jako Island, Indonesia, mainly for poor households of 33,000 households, in an average home with one or more smokers, 10% of households account for tobacco and 68% It was revealed that 22% was devoted to others for food expenses. In contrast, in families without smokers, 75% of households are devoted to food and 25% are besides meals.

"This suggests that 70% of the tobacco fee is being faced by cutting food costs,"Economic Development and Cultural ChangeIt is mentioned in the paper published in the October issue of the magazine.

It has also been found that abating food expenses actually has a nutritional adverse effect on smokers' children. In the survey, it is said that the tendency of the height of the child of the family having the smoker tended to be lower than the child of the same age of the family without the smoker. Height is widely used as a barometer of children 's nutritional status in public health research.

Researchers say that the influence of parent smoking on nutritional status of a child can be inferred intuitively, but an example confirmed empirically is unusual.

In families with smokers there is a tendency to buy low quality food as well as less food to purchase, which seems to lead to malnutrition. According to the survey, in the smoking households, the proportion of expenses to be devoted to rice among food expenses is higher than that of non-smoking households, and the proportion of expensive foods (meat, vegetables, fruits, etc.) is high although it has high nutritional value.

In Indonesia, nearly 60% of adult males are smokers. Smoking rates are high in other developing countries in Asia and it seems that they are on an upward trend. Mr. Block and Mr. Webb's suggest that rising smoking rates threaten developing countries in two ways.

"Direct health damage due to smoking and declining children's food intake related to parent smoking will be an important issue for developing country development," they conclude.