According to the World Food Program (WFP), over 70% of people in Guatemala live in poverty. The country has the 4th highest rate of malnutrition, and the highest rate of malnutrition in Latin America. The WFP says that 49.3% of children are undernourished. Most of these children live in the rural areas. I can definitely vouch for having seen something of a geographically-based health disparity here.

The United States once went through a period of time having malnourished children and adults as well. In 1946 the school lunch program was started to prevent and treat childhood malnutrition, after it was discovered that many young men were ineligible for combat when drafted in World War II. Several measures have been put into place, and have virtually eliminated the issues of under-nutrition in the US. These days, aside from a few rare cases, most of the malnutrition we see in the US is actually obesity. That may sound shocking to those of you who imagine a starving child when you hear the word (hey, I do it, too), but the technical definition of malnutrition is actually an imbalance of nutrients and demand, which is pretty all-inclusive.

Now that we resolved the issues of under-nutrition in the US, we have moved to an age of obesity. Childhood obesity is on the rise in the US, and has even been called an epidemic. Some blame it on the fast food, packaged food, and soft drinks that have taken over children’s lives. Others claim it has to do with that leftover attitude from the ages of under-nutrition, thinking that a fat child is a healthy child. I’ve seen some of this in the Southern grandmas wanting their grandkids to be really chubby and healthy.

Guatemala is a country of contrasts. The city and the country, the coast and the highlands, the capital and everywhere else… There are those undernourished kids who make up almost half of the country’s children, but there’s also a small, and presumably growing population of children who are overweight, reaching towards obesity.

I sat down at lunch with my host family today and saw all of these factors coming into play. The family I have been living with is somewhat non-traditional, they are three grandmothers, and one of their teenage grandsons. Today one of the sons was over for lunch with his two sons. They were pushing the 2-year old to eat, even though he had already had a substantial snack. When he didn’t want to eat his soup, they started in on saying that he was too small, they had to bring him to the doctor’s, and he needed to be eating better. Meanwhile, they gave him a total of about 16 ounces of Coke, which he drank in its entirety (after saying something about it being good to calm his nerves)! They actually seemed to have some awareness of the bad-ness of Coke, because they commented that the teenager should drink water instead (why, I don’t know…). This nutritional concern went even further. They threatened the little boy that he’d have to go to the doctor’s and get shots (though somehow they made ME the bad guy here) if he didn’t eat. They talked about other cousins who didn’t have much money, and didn’t eat very well, though they all thought they knew how to better supplement the kids’ diets. When I walked by later I saw the two boys eating giant coated Oreos, with the open package in front of them. And the kicker, these are two chubby boys. I’d say the 2-year old is normal healthy (which is pretty chubby at this age), and the 8-year old is overweight…

But as strange as all of this may sound, it is clear that it comes out of genuine concern for the children. There is something of a backlash against under-nutrition in the communities of people who can afford more than just the minimum of food. It makes me wonder. How long until we are seeing an obesity epidemic here, too? We are already seeing sky-high levels of Type 2 diabetes and obesity in places like Mexico and India. It’s a paradox.