Education

In developed as well as undeveloped countries education of both the public and health workers is an essential step in the detection and the treatment of nutritional deficiencies.

Education in the Detection of Nutritional Deficiencies
This requires information about various aspects of nutritional deficiency including their:

• Prevalence
• Causes
• Effects

Worldwide there is a need for continuing vigilance and education as the combination of; a growing world population that stretches food provision, the rising cost of food and the fact that even the most developed countries have an impoverished or uninformed sector means that no population is entirely free of the risk of nutritional deficiencies.

This fact is reflected in the World Health Organisation’s policy of monitoring the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in all countries world-wide www.who.int/vmnis/en

Public Nutrition Education in the UK

In both the treatment and prevention of nutritional deficiencies public and professionals need to be educated about:

• Healthy eating in general
• The major food sources of specific nutrients
• The diseases that commonly cause nutritional deficiencies
• The appropriate use of nutritional supplements
• The safety of nutritional supplements

If the UK population were, as a whole, to follow current simple guidelines on healthy eating including alcohol intake the prevalence of an inadequate intake of one or more nutrients would probably halve together with a substantial reduction in the burden of many common disease and the nation’s ever-increasing drug budget.