Developing countries are lagging far behind World Bank nutrition targets amid a spike in global food prices, according to a report released Friday by the World Bank.

Coupled with a fragile global economy, the rise in food prices has stalled progress in poor countries toward the Bank's millennium development goals -- a set of goals that all UN member states aim to achieve by 2015 including reducing child mortality rates, eliminating extreme poverty and combating HIV/AIDS, according to the World Bank's Global Monitoring Report 2012.

The World Bank's 2015 goals "will not be met in any developing region," said the report co-written with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Jos Verbeek, lead author of the report at the World Bank, said the impact of the food price increase depends very much on local, regional and socioeconomic factors, with some groups feeling the sting and others, such as some farmers, benefiting.

The poorest of the world's poor have been the most severely affected, with millions prevented from climbing out of poverty because they must spend an increasing amount of their income on food, Verbeek said. This deprives them of the chance to use excess cash for investments or education.

These are most often non-farmers, urban and female-headed households. Females tend to live more in urban areas and often cannot grow their own food, he said, unlike their rural counterparts, who can grow subsistence crops when times get tough.

Less nutrition means spillover effects in other areas, because malnutrition can lead to susceptibility to illness, as well as poorer school performance among children.

It can also lead to long term health problems, and the damage done to children suffering from malnutrition in the initial stages of their life is "irreversible," Verbeek said.

Nuria Molina, director of policy and research at Save the Children UK, said 2 percent to 3 percent of long-term economic growth could be cut from countries with malnourished children. " It can reinforce poverty traps in low income countries," she said.

Less food also means a rise in the number of families who must sell off their assets to make ends meet. In places like Bangladesh, people are increasingly saddled with debt -- taking out loans just to survive, which further inhibits peoples' ability to get out of poverty.

Lynge Nielsen, lead author of the report on the IMF side, said the globe is facing a weaker and more uncertain external environment for emerging and developing countries, which may pose additional challenges in meeting the Bank's 2015 goals.

Developing countries have been able to weather recent shocks to the global economy. "But the weaker global growth environment has implications as they progress toward the (millennium goals) and there are significant downside risks to the outlook,"Nielsen said.

Xinhua