A Perth teen is dealing with permanent damage to his sight, and almost went blind because he was a fussy eater.  It's cautionary tale to parents to pay attention to their children's' eating habit and make sure they get a balanced diet.

Fairfax Media reports the teen pretty much ate chicken, potatoes, dry bread, and Coke exclusively.  After a while, he complained of having dry, gritty eyes.  His parents took him to various doctors and he was eventually diagnosed with a severe Vitamin A deficiency (VAD). 

"We need a certain amount of vitamin A and without it the cells don't mature normally," said ophthalmologist Stephanie Watson, chairman of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) public health committee. "They don't become eye cells, they start going down another path like skin."

On Professor Watson's advice, the boy began taking supplements and switched to diet filled with nutritious vegetables.  This managed to save his right eye, but damage to the left one is permanent. 

This sort of malnutrition is able to slip by under the radar of many healthcare providers in an advanced nation like Australia because the patient appears otherwise well-fed and healthy.  In other places around the world, VAD is a vexing problem.  Take sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 43 million children under five are at risk of vitamin A deficiency (VAD), the leading cause of childhood blindness in developing nations. 

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding an "orange revolution" in Tanzania, pushing a new orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) that's the result of a crossbreeding program to pack the most beta-carotene (which the body converts into much-needed Vitamin A) into a tuber that is suitable to grow in the local climate.  Three scientists who worked on this landmark bio-fortification project - Doctors Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga, and Jan Low from the CGIAR International Potato Center - have been awarded the 2016 World Food Prize for developing the OFSP.  

The World Health Organization describes biofortification as the process "by which the nutritional quality of food crops is improved through agronomic practices, conventional plant breeding, or modern biotechnology".  It observes: "Biofortification may therefore present a way to reach populations where supplementation and conventional fortification activities may be difficult to implement."