The director of the Spanish Alliance against Hunger and Malnutrition in Spain (ACHME), Benito Aláez, warned today about the increase in problems related to malnutrition in the Spanish society due to the economic crisis. The Tenured Professor of Constitutional Law of the University of Oviedo highlighted that, alongside these circumstances, there has been "a noticeable increase in the problem of obesity among people with low income, who are more numerous each day".

The Alliance, promoted by the University of Oviedo, presented this morning the conclusions of the meeting of experts that took place last October in Oviedo and Avilés. Benito Aláez remarked that the appearance of obesity is directly related to the different social classes, with a high number of inadequate nutritional patterns, such as the intake of meat and cold cuts, in the lower ones, while the higher one spend more buying fruits and vegetables.

The Tenured Professor pointed at the youngest sectors of the population as the one facing the most danger by obesity and highlighted that the difficulty in accessing school lunch programs, due to the economic crisis, is preventing many children from receiving a sufficient nutrition and knowledge about proper food habits.

"In the Spanish context, we cannot talk about hunger or malnutrition, but rather of nutritional hardship", concludes the report, which alerts about the "social vulnerability, with the increase, since 2008, of people under the threshold of poverty".

The Alliance against Hunger and Malnutrition is a global initiative for progress that links organizations and institutions with similar ideas applied to the fight against hunger and malnutrition. It aims at being a forum that gathers the will of these people and set off on concrete actions to erradicate extreme poverty and hunger, one of the first Objectives of Development of the Millenium established by the UN in 2000.