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Recommended: chapter 1 an overview of nutrition
Introduction
Food systems are networks from food production to consumption, traveling through intermediary routes including packaging, processing, transportation, and marketing to reach a person’s table. Each step in the food system can influence a person’s nutritional well-being. Therefore, linking nutrition to food systems examines not only the agricultural and market-driven aspects, but their role as a vehicle for positive change in a community, region or nation’s nutritional welfare.
A Theory of Change serves as a tool for stakeholders to visualize complex real-life problems, understand steps to reach a common long-term goal, find solutions to enable that change, and articulate underlying assumptions. Incorporating nutrition principles
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A food system embodies the people, institutions, environment and the processes food undergoes from its production, processing, marketing to consumption and disposal (FAO, 2013). In more detail, it flows through processes of producing, harvesting, processing, storing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming and disposing food and food packages; and is governed by social, cultural, political, economic and natural conditions (Eames-Sheavly et al., 2011). It crosses multiple fields including agriculture, nutrition and health, food security, and economic development. The scope can range from community or local food systems to regional, national and global food systems, each having its set of needs and …show more content…
Good nutrition depends on healthy diets.
2. Healthy diets require healthy food systems — along with education, health, sanitation and other factors.
3. Health food systems are made possible by appropriate policies, incentives and governance.
Nutrition in Food Systems
Every part of the food system affects consumers’ availability, accessibility, and choice of nutritious foods for a healthy diet. In developing countries, food systems are important mechanisms for alleviating hunger and micronutrient deficiencies. Policies, researches and interventions on food systems are now challenged to include nutrition as their primary objective. Integrating nutrition at the onset of policy, program and intervention design is vital to achieve long-term impacts on nutritional outcomes due to a healthy diets springing from healthy food systems.
Nutrition is the foundation of health and immunity. A person’s nutritional well-being is an effect of (Herforth & Harris, 2014):
* Food: access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to support a healthy, active life.
* Health: including (a) the health environment in terms of pathogens and environmental contaminants, water, and sanitation; and (b) access to health
The book The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, by Wayne Roberts introduces us to the concept of “food system”, which has been neglected by many people in today’s fast-changing and fast-developing global food scene. Roberts points out that rather than food system, more people tend to recognize food as a problem or an opportunity. And he believes that instead of considering food as a “problem”, we should think first and foremost about food as an “opportunity”.
Michael Pollan, an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (Michael Pollan), writes in his book In Defense of Food, the dangers of nutritionism and how to escape the Western diet and subsequently most of the chronic diseases the diet imparts. In the chapter “Nutritionism Defined” Pollan defines the term nutritionism. Pollan’s main assertion being how the ideology of nutritionism defines food as the sum of its nutrients, and from this viewpoint Pollan goes on to write how nutritionism divides food into two categories, with each macronutrient divided against each other as either bad or good nutrients, in a bid for focus of our food fears and enthusiasms. Finally, Pollan concludes that with the relentless focus nutritionism places on nutrients and their interplay distinctions between foods become irrelevant and abandoned.
In Raj Patel’s novel Stuffed and Starved, Patel goes through every aspect of the food production process by taking the experiences of all the people involved in food production from around the world. Patel concludes by eventually blaming both big corporations and governments for their critical role in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and in so doing causing the key food-related problems of today such as starvation and obesity. In this book of facts and serious crime, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a general but available analysis of global food struggles that has a goal of enlightening and motivating the general Western public that there is something critically wrong with our food system.
“Hungry for Change” is an eye opening documentary made to explore the role that food plays in peoples’ lives. The experts, ranging from authors to medical doctors, address a variety of claims through testimonials, experiments, and statistical evidence. They not only state the flaws in this generation’s diet but also logically explain the reasons behind the downfall in peoples’ diet and offer better ways to approach our health.
Stuffed and Starved brings to light the uneven hourglass shape that exists within our world’s food system, and describes what factors contribute to these discrepancies. It begins with the decisions farmers are forced to make on the farm, and ends with the decisions the consumers are able to make at the grocery stores. The purpose of Stuffed and Starved was to describe what factors attribute to the hourglass shape of the food system. Author Raj Patel points out who is profiting and who is suffering in this system, and gives insight as to how the system may be improved.
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
Rosenbaum, D. & Neuberger, Z. (2005, August 17). Food and nutrition programs: Reducing hunger and bolstering nutrition. Retrieved from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=510
Wardlaw, G.M. and Smith. Contemporary Nutrition: Issues and Insights. 5th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill, pp 85, 2004.
In order for us to maintain our lives, we need to consume food to supply nutrient-needs for our bodies. As the global population increased, the demand for food also increased. Increased population led to mass production of foods. However, even with this mass production, in under-developed countries, people are still undernourished. On other hand, in developed and developing countries, people are overfed and suffering from obesity. In addition, the current methods of industrial farming destroy the environment. These problems raised a question to our global food system. Will it be able to sustain our increasing global population and the earth? With this question in my mind, I decided to investigate the sustainability of our current global food system.
Eating nutrients and healthy foods determines health and are essentials for living a better life. Based off of past knowledge
Food system, as defined by Mustafa Koc in his guest lecture presentation, is a “complex
MacLennan R, Zhang A. “Cuisine: the concept and its health and nutrition implications-global.”Asia Pacific J Clin Nutr. 13.2(2004):131-135. Print.
This can not be done with the same ineffective tactics that were used in the past, so that’s why people are developing new ways to eradicate hunger. When the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) was held, they discussed the nutrition component and how important it is that it is not overlooked. By paying attention to nutrient-dense foods and recognizing the different entry points for improving nutrition, the ICN2 argues the world will be one step closer in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal. Some of the entry points they discussed include “the promotion of crop diversification…, strengthening local food production and processing, and exploring regulatory or voluntary instruments for promoting healthy diets” (goals 2). Promoting the nutrition aspect of the goal can help achieve it because nutrients are what keep people alive and
...ts. It is important to understand which substances need to be consumed more than others and also why the body needs to consume a substance. Proper diet and nutrition is a vital component to a long and healthy life.
But, food might not only sustain life, it can also give particular disease if you had the wrong selection. Knowledge about food nutrition and proper selection is too pricey to disregard. The key to have a better and healthy lifestyle is to consume a variety of foods at the right amount to meet your body’s calorie needs. Eating with a healthy meal plan will show you how much you need from each food group I gave you above to sustain your body with the daily nutrients intake that promote not only good health but longer lives. I suggest you will make your own food plan to help your fitness grooming easy to