Smokers may exacerbate malnutrition in developing countries, study finds

Aug 25 2009

The ANI24/Times of India examines the results of a recent study that found smokers in rural Indonesia tend to compromise their family food budgets in order to support their habit.

The report, published in the journal Economic Development and Cultural Change, documents how surveys of 33,000, predominately poor, households in Java, Indonesia, revealed that the averaged family with one smoker spends 68 percent of the family budget on food compared to the average non-smoking family that spends 75 percent of the budget on food (8/24).

"[D]ecreased spending on food appears to have real nutritional consequences for children of smokers," according to a Economic Development and Cultural Change press release. "The study found that smokers' children tend to be slightly shorter for their ages than the children of non-smokers … a general barometer for nutrition in children" (8/24).

ANI24/Times of India adds: "The combination of direct health threats from smoking coupled with the potential loss of (food) consumption among children linked to tobacco expenditure presents a development challenge of the highest order," the researchers conclude (8/24).

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