Is “sailor’s disease”, aka “scurvy”, making a comeback on French territory? This is what LFI MP Sarah Legrain denounces. We are in the 7th economic power in the world and we have the return of scurvy, it pisses me off! she said, Thursday January 16. When you mentioned giving children five fruits and vegetables a day, well that’s scurvy! It’s a disease in children who don’t eat enough fresh produce.” According to the LFI MP, it is the surge in prices which is responsible for the return of this disease which we thought had disappeared, because it does not allow all families to buy enough rich fruits and vegetables.
Scurvy, “sailors' disease“, in reference to the explorers of the renaissance who were victims of it, can lead to serious health problems: bone pain, muscle weakness or even hemorrhages. It is caused by a significant and prolonged deficiency in vitamin C, i.e. -say when you don't eat enough fruits and vegetables.
This disease, which we thought existed in another century, is resurfacing among younger people. The number of cases of scurvy in children is on the rise in France, according to a study(New window) published in the scientific journal The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, on December 6, 2024 and carried out by AP-HP, Inserm, the University of Paris-Cité and the pediatric department of Cayenne hospital in Guyana. In total, 888 cases were recorded in children between 2015 and 2023, especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
-According to Ulrich Meinzer, coordinator of the study, if scurvy is back on French territory, it is mainly linked to inflation, in other words, to the evolution of the cost of living in recent years. Contacted by franceinfo, he explains that they did “a correlation between the increase in cases of scurvy on the one hand and the rise in prices on the other and they concluded that since the covid-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine, precarious families no longer have ways to buy enough fruits and vegetables.“He adds that”as proof, the majority of cases of scurvy recorded, 532 sick children, were between 2020 and 2023.”
An observation reinforced by data from Credoc, the research center on living conditions. According to their data, inflation since covid has caused a very sharp increase in food insecurity. For example, in 2022, 40% of French people said they would limit their food spending, which is double compared to 2020.
