DMU academics secure research grant to tackle malnutrition in Africa
Two academics from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) are to take part in an €11 million, six year-long research project which hopes to tackle malnutrition in parts of the African continent.
Parvez Haris, Professor of Biomedical Science at DMU, has secured more than €671,000 (around £570,000) from a pot being shared between a consortium of 20 African and European institutions in a project called Healthy Diets 4 Africa.
Prof Haris will be a principal investigator in the project, specialising in food safety and nutrition, while DMU’s Dr Helen Coulthard, a psychologist and Reader in Lifespan Eating Behaviour, is to be a co-investigator, using her expertise to understand what is perceived as a healthy diet in African communities.
DMU is the only UK university taking part in the research which focusses on what is called a Double Burden of Malnutrition (DBM).
Scientists say that parts of the African population have been buying increased amounts of processed food over the past 50 years, due to increased urbanisation and more people working outside of the home, leaving them with less time to prepare and cook nutritious meals.
Prof Haris was approached to join the research team due to his previous work on the links between diet, nutrition and health. This includes his research into exposure to toxic arsenic through the consumption of high quantities of rice by populations in areas such as Bangladesh. It was particularly worrying for this region because rice makes up such a large part of the nation’s diet.
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Prof Haris said: “The DBM has emerged as a health problem in sub-Saharan Africa. While we have what people see as malnutrition in terms of a lack of nutritious food, we are also seeing growing obesity due to the supply of high fat, high sugar processed foods.
“I will be looking at the food safety aspect of this research to see what toxins and other potentially harmful food substances are appearing in people’s diet and how these can be reduced.
“We need to investigate what are the bad substances – so we will be looking at pesticides, heavy metals and mycotoxins – as well as the good things – such as foods high in fibre and essential nutrients.
The research will concentrate on sub-Saharan countries in Eastern, Central and Western Africa, namely Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Uganda.
The Healthy Diets 4 Africa research summary explains: “Some countries in Africa are undergoing “nutrition transformation” with the co-existence of undernutrition and obesity due to greater consumption of foods that are low in nutrient quality but higher in sugar, fat and salt content.
“There are also concerns regarding food safety and more work is needed to identify contaminants in foods and their sources. Such knowledge is valuable for improving nutrition and reducing diseases associated with the consumption of foods that are nutritionally poor and also contain toxic chemicals.”
SOURCE: dmu.ac.uk
