Palma.—The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that 2.3 million Spanish children aged below 16 are at risk of malnutrition as a result of economic slump which has forced many families to cut down on basic necessities.
"First they lower the quality of the food and buy cheaper. They stop buying meat and fish, later vegetables and fresh fruit," Gabriel Gonzalez-Bueno, responsible for UNICEF Child Policies in Spain, said in a statement yesterday.
"Instead they eat a lot of pasta and rice which do not contain all the necessary nutrients.
"Lastly, they reduce the amount of food they eat," the statement added.
Gonzalez-Bueno warned that food deficit in Spain, hit by recession, will increase the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases among children. Battered by the global financial downturn, the Spanish economy collapsed into recession in the second half of 2008, taking millions of jobs with it.