08/05/14

Climate change may increase ‘hidden hunger’

Copyright: CIAT

By: Rasika Sittamparam

We encourage you to republish this article online and in print, it’s free under our creative commons attribution license, but please follow some simple guidelines:

You have to credit our authors.
You have to credit SciDev.Net — where possible include our logo with a link back to the original article.
You can simply run the first few lines of the article and then add: “Read the full article on SciDev.Net” containing a link back to the original article.
If you want to also take images published in this story you will need to confirm with the original source if you're licensed to use them.
The easiest way to get the article on your site is to embed the code below.

For more information view our media page and republishing guidelines.

The full article is available here as HTML.

Press Ctrl-C to copy

<div class="article-wrap">
<div id="article-introduction">
<h1>Climate change may increase ‘hidden hunger’</h1>
<h4>By: Rasika Sittamparam</h4>
</div>
<br />
<br />

<div id="article-body">
<p><iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="no" height="450" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/148493730&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>Almost two billion people worldwide have too little zinc and iron in their <a href="https://www.scidev.net/health/nutrition/">diet</a>, which can cause problems such as anaemia, especially in <a href="https://www.scidev.net/health/children/">children</a>. According to a new study published in <em>Nature</em>, climate change may significantly increase the problem in the coming decades.<br />
 <br />
The authors say that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reduce the amount of these nutrients in the most <a href="https://www.scidev.net/agriculture/farming/">common crops</a> such as rice, wheat and legumes. This means that people whose diets are based on these crops will get less zinc and iron despite eating the same quantity of food.<br />
 <br />
The scientists call for more research to develop crop strains that are more resistant to higher carbon dioxide levels or that are naturally richer in iron and zinc.</p>

</div>
<div class="quick-links-wrapper">
<h3>You might also like</h3>
[related-articles]
</div>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/multimedia/climate-change-may-increase-hidden-hunger/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(e,t,n,r,i,s,o){e["GoogleAnalyticsObject"]=i;e[i]=e[i]||function(){(e[i].q=e[i].q||[]).push(arguments)},e[i].l=1*new Date;s=t.createElement(n),o=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];s.async=1;s.src=r;o.parentNode.insertBefore(s,o)})(window,document,"script","//www.google-analytics.com/ga.js","ga");var _gaq=_gaq||[];var _gaq=_gaq||[];_gaq.push(["_setAccount","UA-3223906-8"],["_trackEvent","article interaction","republished","https://www.scidev.net/global/multimedia/climate-change-may-increase-hidden-hunger/",null,true])
</script>
</div>

Almost two billion people worldwide have too little zinc and iron in their diet, which can cause problems such as anaemia, especially in children. According to a new study published in Nature, climate change may significantly increase the problem in the coming decades.

The authors say that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reduce the amount of these nutrients in the most common crops such as rice, wheat and legumes. This means that people whose diets are based on these crops will get less zinc and iron despite eating the same quantity of food.

The scientists call for more research to develop crop strains that are more resistant to higher carbon dioxide levels or that are naturally richer in iron and zinc.