Eat and Succeed: Hidden Hunger with Lizè Gentle

KovsieCAST is KovsieFM podcasts aimed at assisting you to achieve academic success brought to you by the University of the Free State Student Affairs and the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and today presented by the UFS Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. This forms part of the Eat and Succeed series and we talked to LizèGentle from the UFS Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. She says hidden hunger may seem like a funny term. A basic definition of hidden hunger is malnutrition or ‘hunger’ that isn’t seen. The person may not seem hungry, but their diets are mainly inadequate in terms of important food groups. In other words, for example, say you eat maize meal/pap every day for breakfast, lunch and supper. You won’t feel hungry, but because you exclude other important foods, you don’t feed your body everything it actually needs.  Malnutrition is a state/condition where a person doesn’t get enough of the different food groups to sustain/maintain health strength to do basic daily activities.