Original version

BBC World Service Australasia

Health Check

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Health issues and medical breakthroughs from around the world.

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

Health Check: Malnutrition – you can be fat or thin

Magazines & Reviews

Young African woman cooking a meal on the ground

2019/12/18 GMT

Malnutrition – you can be fat or thin

BBC World Service - Health Check, Malnutrition – you can be fat or thin

Emergency food supplies help starving children – but may fuel obesity

Emergency food supplies help starving children – but may fuel obesity; Drones take insulin to diabetics on the Aran Islands in Scotland; Why gender matters if you are a magician.

The word 'malnutrition' makes most people think of a thin child, starving because of famine. Aid agencies have helped to reduce the number of people who do not have enough food to eat in developing countries. But the starchy foods which are available to them at low cost – plus the emergence of cheap junk food – is fuelling another form of malnutrition - obesity. A series of papers in the Lancet urge action on the issue before it’s too late. 

Climate change is beginning to be linked with changing patterns of weather. A doctor working on the west coast of Ireland noticed how storms prevented some of his patients from getting to appointments. He thought that drone technology might provide an alternative way of getting vital drugs out to his patients – such as diabetics who rely on insulin. 

Women were not allowed into the magicians’ club – the Magic Circle - until 1991. But as well as being a male-dominated industry, there is an extra obstacle in the path of women conjurors – the way the minds of those in the audience work. We hear from a researcher from Goldsmiths University of London who has analysed reactions to magicians – depending on whether they were women or men.

(Photo: African woman cooking a wood fire. Credit: Golero/Getty Images)

Health Check was presented by Claudia Hammond

Producer: Paula McGrath

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Health Check

Malnutrition – you can be fat or thin

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Australasia

About BBC World Service