By Frances
Moore
Lappe and Anna Lappe
Bill
Gates thinks
he’s got a brilliant idea: fighting malnutrition abroad by fortifying
food.
The
scheme, backed
with $50 million from the Gates Foundation, in part encourages Proctor
& Gamble, Philip Morris’ Kraft, and other companies to develop
vitamin
and iron-fortified processed foods. It then facilitates their entry into
Third World markets.
Gates
seems to
believe we don’t have time to address the complex social and political
roots of malnutrition. But in opting for this single-focus, top-down,
technical
intervention, Gates can end up hurting the very people he wants to help.
His
strategy ignores
a crucial reality: Many, if not most, of the hungriest people in the
world
are themselves farmers. They eke out a living by selling what they grow,
and eating it. Helping foreign food purveyors penetrate their markets
will
only further rob them of livelihood. For example, India’s dairy
cooperatives
— many run by poor women — would be hard-pressed to withstand the
onslaught
of Kraft’s marketing power.
The Gates
approach
also hurts the poor if it shifts tastes toward processed foods —
typically
adding fat, sugar, and salt while removing needed fiber and
micronutrients.
This diet trend already contributes to the spread of diseases currently
burdening the industrial world. Obesity and diet-related diseases
including
diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are becoming a global crisis. In the
Third World, grossly insufficient health care budgets are now being
diverted
to treat these conditions, and away from treating deadly infectious
diseases.