Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Conclusion
Life expectancy has increased significantly in middle- and high-income countries
since the nineteenth century, in part because of improved nutrition, together with
better housing, vaccinations and other social and medical advances. As recently as
the mid 1960s, there were widespread, well-grounded fears of vast famines in low-
income countries. In the main, these famines did not eventuate, but the number of
hronically undernourished people is today estimated at more than a billion, and in
some countries more than 40 per cent of hildren are hronically undernourished.
On the other hand, at least a billion people live in an environment where the food
they consume has excess calories, but not necessarily sufficient micronutrients.
While there has been an enormous expansion in the production and consump-
tion of food, especially of animal products, fat and carbohydrates, the production
and consumption of the nutritious food whih humans evolved to eat has not kept
pace. The current maldistribution and inequitable consumption of dietary diversity
is likely to become more pronounced as deleterious climate hange becomes further
entrenhed, and as energy prices rise. We propose that the malconsumption of diet-
ary diversity is partly a result of our evolutionarily-driven propensity to feast, inter-
acting with the global maldistribution of nutritional diversity, whih in turn is partly
atributed to a global corporatized food system. his maldistribution is not a result
of nutritional ignorance because we note that people did not have to be nutritionally
literate to be nutritiously fed. The quote from Hippocrates at the beginning of our
hapter indicates a keen awareness that eating foods that require physical activity -
that is, local foods that were also appropriate to the natural surroundings (seasonal,
etc.) - are health promoting. Rather, malproduction, distribution and consumption
are features of a metabolic rit whih is the result of, and in turn fosters, disengage-
ments between the environment, food producers and consumers.
his hapter highlights the uneven way in whih nutritional and health insecur-
ity is playing out in diferent parts of the world; a situation whih is deteriorating
as wealthy consumers seek health protective foods. We aknowledge that, historic-
ally, a substantial part of the global trade in nutrients has been of benefit to health
through enabling a higher consumption of macronutrient-dense food by populations
in low-income countries. Yet, even there, consumption by many is likely to increas-
ingly exceed thresholds of dietary harm, not to mention exert a growing cost to the
Earth's system. Unless we ensure that health, sustainability and justice considera-
tions shape the food and agricultural system as growing numbers suggest, and whih
