Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
he uncritical mass consumption of suh supplements by apparently healthy people
truly justifies the term “vitamania” (Apple, 1996).
Suh public health concerns are consistently overlooked by giant food pro-
cessors, like Nestlé and other actors in the food services sector including super-
market and fast-food hains, even though they position themselves as strongly con-
cerned with health and wellness (Burh and Lawrence, 2009). In the main this is a
defensive strategy designed to reclaim legitimacy eroded through successive food
scares and the accumulating evidence that a sik food system causes sik populations
(Dixon and Banwell, in press).
It also capitalizes on the fears of 'the worried well': the middle classes who
are increasingly obsessed with health protection and atempts to fend of disease
through diet. For them, at the moment, anti-oxidant rih diets are the holy grail. Just
as sales of margarine and hiken escalated in the 1970s when nutrition scientists
established a link between heart disease and high fat diets, foods associated with
claimed anti-oxidant properties command high prices in the global marketplace. In-
terestingly anti-oxidants are among the harder to measure nutrients and, as suh, are
more open to nutritional cacophony and hence to exploitation in the marketplace
than longer recognized nutrients.
In a recent special issue of
Globalizations
, half a dozen case studies illustrated the
cascade of negative effects that can result when domestic agriculture is reoriented
to produce export foods that are prized by wealthy consumers for their anti-oxidant
and other nutrient values - including tea, hocolate and exotic fruits and vegetables
(Cooke
et al.
, 2008). Fish is an exemplar case, following its promotion as being rih in
beneicial omega-3 faty acid. Many national dietary guidelines advocate at least two
servings of, preferably oily, fish a week; thus its demand, even in traditionally meat-
eating countries, is escalating. In Australia, the volumes of imported fish increase
eah year, driven by price signals. hailand, whose ishing industry is underpinned
by heap and exploited labour, is a favoured source of those ish. hai isherpeople
are now reliant for their incomes, and their access to food, on contracts with large
transnational export firms, and this has been encouraged by the Thai government as
part of its drive to become the 'kithen to the world'.
A move away from food self-reliance to income generation, through the export
of embedded nutrients to cosmopolitan centres, extracts a high cost to producer eco-
systems and to human health and well-being, both for producers and even con-
sumers. Gambia's recent development of rice exports, encouraged by development
