Module 3 covers the nutritional needs to which human consumption patterns ideally respond within food systems and some of the nutritional challenges (related to both deficit and excess of diet components) that are currently faced by food systems. Module 3.1 covers some current basic knowledge on human nutritional requirements and features of diets that are health-promoting. Module 3.2 covers current issues within food systems of malnutrition, as well as the challenges and efforts aimed at making diets healthier, both in the United States and around the world. We encourage you as learners to think about how these nutritional principles, and efforts to promote food access and healthier diets, can fit with the analysis of the focal region you will be completing for your capstone region.
This module addresses issues surrounding diet and nutrition in food systems. This is an aspect that touches all of us very personally – we’ve likely read and absorbed some of the messages about healthy eating that are promoted by government agencies, advocacy groups, and other voices in our society, as well as a substantial dose of messages of all sorts promoting food choices - healthy and otherwise - from food companies within the modern food system. For many of us nutrition goals and principles motivate important decisions that we make on a daily, ongoing basis: can we include a vegetable with our dinner? What makes for a healthy breakfast? How to make snacks healthy rather than an excuse for junk food? Food choices are also wrapped around culture and religious observance for many of us, illustrating how our human systems of culture and ethnic origin feed into food systems, along with our beliefs and principles regarding the supernatural. This echoes the way that food systems and domestication of food-producing plants and livestock were wrapped together with culture and religion in earlier historical and prehistoric periods (see Module 2). Food choices are also wrapped up in social status, as well as linked to environmental sustainability. For example, once we appreciate the dramatically increased use of water to produce beef and the fact that water shortages may be one of the key stresses brought on by climate change (see module 1 food system examples, following modules on water and resilience), we may rethink meat consumption in our society and take a different view of the aspiration of growing wealthy social sectors around the world to consume more beef.
The impact of food choices on the environment is not the only reason to consider diet and nutrition. As a society, our food choices and our ability to access sufficient and healthy food have a dramatic influence on our own health and well-being. This is seen most clearly as two major issues facing societies around the world. The first is a crisis of chronic malnutrition and nutrient deficiencies: the lack of crucial elements of minerals, vitamins, proteins, and high-quality fats around the world have dramatic negative effects, while appropriate diets can prolong life and good health even among people who are materially poor in other ways. The second major issue facing modern and modernizing societies are nutrition-linked disorders such as heart disease and type II diabetes, linked to overconsumption of calories in relation to sedentary lifestyles that translates into increased rates of obesity within both wealthy and poor countries.
Diet and nutrition patterns thus show the potential to either support or harm both the health of the environment and the health of humans within the human systems that live in constant interaction with the environment as main components of food systems.
After completing this module, students will be able to:
Please note that some portions of the Summative Assessment may need to be completed prior to class. Detailed instructions for completing the Summative Assessment will be provided in each module.
Action | Assignment | Location |
---|---|---|
To Read |
|
|
To Do |
|
|
If you have any questions, please send them through Canvas e-mail. We will check daily to respond. If your question is one that is relevant to the entire class, we may respond to the entire class rather than individually.
If you have any questions, please post them to the discussion forum in Canvas. We will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
We'll start this module with the basics of nutrition and diet required for basic human functioning as well as good health. Nutrition basics start with the idea of a balanced diet, which should provide the essential nutrients for daily human activities, growth and tissue repair, and overall health, which have been demonstrated by years of research on human nutritional needs. Figure 3.1.1 shows one recent attempt to summarize this scientifically grounded view of a balanced diet in an accessible way as a "healthy eating plate". You'll notice that the sections addressing diet throughout module 3 will refer back to the concept of balanced combinations of nutrients from different food sources that create this balanced diet. It is also important to state that nutritional theories and the concept of the optimal diet have been somewhat changing over decades and centuries, which may give us reason to be careful about the certainty with which we hold to nutrition beliefs. See "High-quality fats and shifting paradigms around fat in diets [3]", further on in this module, on the changing attitudes from researchers towards different fat sources in human diets. Nevertheless, years of nutrition research up to the present have defined the requirements of a healthy diet that have been incorporated into the nutritional guidelines summarized in figure 3.1.1. and also published by the United States Department of Agriculture and other government agencies around the world.
What follows in the rest of module 3.1 is a summarized description of human nutritional requirements, intended to allow you to relate these to food systems as the source of human nutrition. Because of this, we will present both the requirements (e.g. vitamin A versus vitamin C versus amino acids) and also some major issues with particular nutrients that tend towards deficiency in many human populations and their related food systems. At the outset, we can already guide your learning by presenting an exceptionally simplified version of human nutrient needs that you will flesh out in the following pages. To a crude approximation, humans need the following components in their diets: energy, which in practice means carbohydrates, fats, and protein seen in relation to their energetic content; "building blocks" of growth and maintenance, which is generally protein linked to higher-protein foods but occurring within both the protein and whole-grain fraction of the healthy plate above; and promotion of health, proper development, and proper function, closely linked to vitamins and mineral intake. We'll delve into these elements of a balanced diet one by one in the following pages, and add a few details as well. An additional point that deserves mentioning now is the particular importance of proper nutrition for growth, mental development, and health promotion in children. Children are thus particularly vulnerable to nutrient deficiencies, and the consequences of deficiencies can be long-lived in their development into adulthood.
Carbohydrates (starches and sugars), fat, and protein within food can all function as sources of energy when they are metabolized to carbon dioxide and water in respiration processes in all of our body’s cells. This energy fuels everything from the production of neurotransmitters in our brains to the muscle contractions required to shoot a basketball or weave a basket. The energy content of food is expressed as “calories” (“calories” are in reality kcal or kilocalories as defined in chemistry; 1 kcal will heat one liter of water one degree C). Energy-dense foods with high caloric content are generally those with high carbohydrate, protein, or fat content - for example, pasta, bread, oatmeal, grits, and other cooked whole grains and porridges consumed around the world as staples; plant oils or animal lard present in cooked foods, or meat and cheese. It is interesting to note that gram for gram, fats contain over twice the energy density of carbohydrates or protein: about 9 kcal per gram for fats versus only about 4 kcal per gram for carbohydrates and protein. We’ll address the further role of high-quality fats as a nutrient, rather than just an energy source on a page further on.
Current U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other major nutritional guidelines promote the idea of accessing calories via a predominance of whole grains (e.g.. whole wheat and oats and flours made from these, brown rice) as these whole grains contain a mixture of carbohydrates, proteins, and indigestible fiber, as well as vitamins. These non-caloric contributions to nutrition are also important as discussed in the pages below, and combine well with the caloric content of food to produce better health outcomes. Calories are a fundamental consideration within nutrition because a negative calorie balance (calories consumed minus those expended in human sedentary activities and exercise) along with shortages of other associated food components described below leads to weight loss and faltering growth in children, including childhood stunting and permanent harm to a person’s developmental potential. By contrast, large excesses in a calorie balance over time lead to weight gain that is linked at a population level to increased rates of heart disease and diabetes. These diet-related diseases increasingly afflict populations in industrialized economies and urban populations worldwide with access to abundant, though often less healthy, food choices. Diet-related diseases as part of food systems will be taken up again in module 3.2.
The second main component conceptualized by nutritionists as a key ingredient of a healthy diet is protein, which is used in many different ways to build up and repair human tissues. Proteins are basically chains of component parts called amino acids, and it is these amino acids that are the basic “currency” of protein nutrition. Twenty amino acids are common in foods, and of these nine[1] are essential because humans cannot synthesize them from other nutrient molecules. Meat, fish, and eggs are animal-based and protein-dense foods that contain the complete profile of amino acids, basically because we are eating products that are very similar in composition to our own body tissues. In addition, some grains such as quinoa and buckwheat contain complete protein, while most legumes (peas, beans, soybeans, bean sprouts, products made from these) are high in proteins in a way that complements grains in the diet.
For people who do not eat meat (a vegetarian diet) or who avoid all animal-based foods (vegan diets), the full complement of amino acids are accessed by eating milk and egg products or by eating a diversity of plant-based foods with proteins such as whole grains, nuts, and legumes. Legumes are particularly protein-dense and important in addressing the lack of amino acids in other plant-based foods. The combination of rice and beans is an oft-cited example of the complementarity of amino acids for a complete amino acid profile. Eating a wide range of plant-based foods is an excellent strategy to access the full complement of essential amino acids, as well as the diversity of mineral, vitamin, and fiber needs discussed on the next pages. Many of the most problematic diets are those that are highly monotonous due to poverty and/or inadequate knowledge about diet, with an excess or a sole dependence on a single starch source without legumes or animal products, or overconsumption of processed foods in comparison to fresh plant and whole-grain foods. Where only a single grain is eaten, deficiencies of certain amino acids can result.
[1] These are phenylalanine, tryptophan, methionine, lysine, leucine, isoleucine, valine, and threonine, which you can find in many introductory nutrition texts or resources online, if further interested. A ninth amino acid, histidine, is important in child growth and may also be vital to tissue repair, while another, arginine is essential for some growth stages and can usually be synthesized by healthy adults.
In addition to the daily requirements for energy and protein, vitamins and minerals are required in relatively small amounts as part of a proper diet to ensure proper functioning and health and are especially important for childhood development. Vitamins and minerals deficiencies can lead to “hidden hunger”, where energy and protein needs are being met but the lack of vitamins and minerals prevents adequate development and health of child rent and saps the productive capacity of adults, for example via iron-deficiency anemia (see below). There are a large number of essential vitamin and mineral components in foods. In this module, we focus on a few that frequently pose major challenges within food systems. If you are interested, full details on the roles of many nutrients can be found in the excellent online text from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Human Nutrition in the Developing World [6]. This module's formative assessment may also point to other vitamins and minerals that can become deficient in diets.
Although it is important for other functions, calcium is emblematic in its role in proper bone growth and maintenance. It is especially important for women to consume adequate calcium throughout life, and higher intakes of calcium from childhood on are associated with lower rates of osteoporosis and stronger bones later in life. Vitamin D is also essential for the proper absorption of calcium so that a vitamin D deficiency can lead to calcium deficiency. Dairy products and small fish that are consumed whole (so that fine bones are eaten) are highly calcium-dense foods around the world. Grains are low in calcium but are consumed in such volumes that they often contribute substantial calcium to diets. As is true for many other nutrients, women who are breastfeeding a child have an especially high calcium need because they export calcium in their breast milk to help grow the bones of a developing infant.
Iron is most important as an ingredient in hemoglobin that causes the red color of blood, and the role of red blood cells in carrying oxygen. Iron deficiency thus leads to anemia from a lack of red blood cells, including shortness of breath and overall weakness. Women require more iron than men because of blood loss in menstruation, and pregnant and lactating women require especially high amounts of iron as they expand their blood supply and provide for a growing fetus. During lactation or breastfeeding, mothers pass substantial amounts of iron to their growing infants, so that iron need for women is also high during the period when mothers are nursing their children. When shortage arises during pregnancy or lactation, a woman’s iron stores tend to be sacrificed to the benefit of the child, which can leave a mother who lacks adequate food due to poverty with acute iron deficiency and anemia that greatly complicates other daily activities such as economically important work. The best sources of iron in foods are meat, fish, eggs, green leafy vegetables, and whole grains. Cooking food cast iron utensils is also an easy way to supplement iron in food.
Zinc is an essential mineral that is important in a large number of human cellular enzyme processes. It is important for proper tissue growth, cell division, wound healing, and the functioning of the immune system, among other functions. As such it is very important for children’s health, growth, and development. Zinc is an example of a nutrient that is often used to fortify processed foods and is also naturally present in a wide variety of foods such as red meat, poultry, beans, nuts, and whole grains. One goal of plant breeders recently has been to breed or identify traditional varieties of whole grains and potatoes that are high in zinc and iron. This way of enhancing diets by way of the properties of crop plants is called a biofortification strategy. Because these staple foods are usually present even in the most rudimentary diets associated with extreme poverty, biofortification can be an effective strategy to ease access to these important mineral nutrients in the most vulnerable populations.
Vitamin A or retinol (linked to the word ‘retina’ or part of the eye) is famous for the popularized connection between eating carrots and good eyesight. Vitamin A deficiency is the cause of reduced vision in dim light, called night blindness, as well as a broad correlation to increased infant mortality in children from a variety of causes. True vitamin A is not in fact directly present in carrots and other dark green or pigmented vegetables (collards, squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and even yellow maize) but is readily synthesized in the body from the orange pigment (beta-carotene) that these plant sources contain. True retinol is found in eggs as well as meat and fish products. Like zinc, vitamin A is another crucial nutrient for growth and development that can become deficient in the diets of children and other vulnerable groups (Figure 3.1.2), and has been targeted as a priority for resource-poor populations around the world through the promotion of orange-fleshed sweet potato, other orange vegetables, and yellow maize within smallholder diets and "golden rice" as a genetically engineered innovation in maize varieties that was developed to address vitamin A deficiency. While not all biofortification approaches utilize genetic engineering, golden rice is a further example of a biofortification strategy.
Vitamin C is not a major deficiency challenge worldwide, though in the 1700s vitamin C deficiency was linked to the disorder scurvy in sailors due to highly monotonous diets. Rather it is presented here because of its iconic association with fresh fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruit but also potatoes, bananas, spinach, collards, cabbage, and many of the weeds that are consumed around the world as leafy vegetables. True deficiency is thus uncommon in most diets around the world, though vitamin C’s role as an antioxidant and health-promoting vitamin that “cleans up” harmful free radicals in the body has been promoted. Also, vitamin C is an excellent example of a positive interaction between nutrients. Vitamin C promotes iron absorption. Since most plant sources of iron are much less available than so-called heme iron in animal iron sources, fruits and vegetables with vitamin C in the same meal with plant-based sources of iron are an excellent way for people that eat meat-free diets (or just individual meals without meat) to absorb sufficient iron.
A number of other vitamins and minerals are essential, and in general, the way that a food system can work to provide these to human populations is to make a wide variety of plant-based foods as well as a few meat options, available to consumers. As we will see soon, this is in contrast to what certain sectors of the food system often make available to consumers. Some of these important vitamins and minerals are Vitamin C, Vitamin D, the B-complex vitamins, potassium, and magnesium, and you may see these arise as concerns in the formative assessment below.
A complete description of vitamins, minerals, and other diet components in an accessible format can be found in the online book from the FAO, Human Nutrition in the Developing World [6].
You may be familiar with the idea that fats are perhaps "delicious yet harmful" for most humans, and to be consumed in moderation (see the balanced plate in figure 3.1.1). Recently there has been increased attention focused on the role that “good fats” play in health and development, in addition to the awareness that most diets in more affluent areas of the world contain excessive fat, especially saturated fats of animal origin. Unsaturated fatty acids of plant origin are generally considered essential healthy nutrients, and there is evidence that fatty acids derived from plant sources and fish are important in promoting better neural development and nerve function. For consumers that tend to face food-insecure conditions, also, fats are a highly concentrated energy (calorie) source and therefore a valuable addition to a diet. Where calories are already in excess such as in many urban diets around the world and particularly in the industrialized first world, the calorie content is not a benefit of high-fat diets. Recently it has been found that excessively processed or hydrogenated fats often included in processed foods (trans-fats) are harmful to health, and so labeling now specifies the trans-fat content of foods. For example, you can find the trans-fat content of diets in the diet tool used with this module's formative assessment.
Fat in foods as a case study of shifting paradigms in nutrition
(this section is adapted from a contribution by Human Geographer Mark Blumler at Binghamton University)
Most of us have probably absorbed the current overall thinking that fat in diets needs to be treated with caution, that it is synonymous with "divine" or "sinful" food in a joking way, or perhaps that there is something suspect about fat. Because of evolving in limited nutrition environments, most humans are primed to take in fats and other high-calorie foods as a nutritional bonanza and store it away in an evolutionarily "thrifty" way to confront future calorie shortage. However, western nutrition scientists’ beliefs regarding different types of fat in diets have undergone drastic fluctuations over the past century (Table 3.1) that may potentially shake our confidence in exactly what is known about "good" and "bad" in nutritional terms. The advice coming out of the nutritional science community, as filtered through government proclamations such as the food pyramid, have also caused enormous changes in the American diet, which have benefited some such as the vegetable oil processing industry, while hurting others such as cattle ranchers and the beef lobby.
To recap this sometimes bewildering history: around the 1960s, scientists discovered a relationship between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease and noticed that saturated fats have more cholesterol than other oils. Consequently, there was a big push to replace butter with margarine and to cut back on the consumption of red meats, lard, and other animal fats. Initially, it was believed that polyunsaturated fats such as safflower oil are most heart-healthy and so there was a major promotion of such oils. Later, interest developed in the “Mediterranean diet” because of the presence of many very old people in Mediterranean Europe, and nutritionists came to believe that monounsaturated fats such as in olive oil were best for us. Polyunsaturated oils, on the other hand, were increasingly shown to be not beneficial. Meanwhile, further research showed that cholesterol in the blood does not correlate with cholesterol in the diet, undermining the assumption that saturated fats are unhealthy. Trans fats, high in margarine and other processed fatty foods, were shown to be very inimical to heart health. Also, fish oils were recognized as being high in omega 3 fatty acids, which are deficient in the typical American diet today. Recently, butter has been officially accepted as “good” fat, reversing a half-century of denigration of its nutritional value. While other saturated fats are not yet accepted, there is nothing to distinguish butter from the others that would explain how it could be “good” and the others “bad”.
Fat | 1900 | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 2000 | 2015 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Butter | Good | Bad | Bad | Bad | Bad | Good |
Egg Yolks | Good | OK | Bad | Bad | Bad | OK? |
Lard | Good | bad | Bad | Bad | Bad | Bad? |
Fish oil | Good | Good | Bad? | OK? | Very Good | Very Good |
Coconut oil | Good | Good | Bad | OK? | OK? | Good? |
Olive oil | Good | Good | OK | Best | Best | Good |
Safflower oil | OK? | Good | Best | Good | OK | ??? |
Margarine | - | Good | Good | Bad | Bad | Bad |
It is interesting to compare these shifting attitudes against traditional diets: The Japanese have the longest life span of any nation. Within Japan, the longest-lived are Okinawans. On Okinawa the only fat used for cooking is lard (of course, being on an island Okinawans also consume considerable fish oil although they do not cook with it). So, what is going on here? Why can science and scientists not "make up their minds" about fat in diets? Are findings on diet overly influenced by lobbying groups of major food industries, as some have charged for the case of margarine or dairy fats?
The story of fat recommendations illustrates the nature of science, that it proceeds piece by piece, and also seems to have a penchant for identifying single causes that are later shown in the context of a complex system to be overly simplistic. Each research finding, such as that cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease, may have been correct. But that gave rise to recommendations that were wrong, because other facts, such as that dietary cholesterol does not correlate with blood cholesterol, were not yet known. Given that many of us would like to eat healthy diets and may also believe that science should guide better nutritional policy, there is a need for principles that emerge from current science to inform dietary recommendations, rather than the confusion that is perhaps caused by this tangled story about the history fats in nutrition. In the summary below, we try to provide some ballpark recommendations regarding fats, other dietary constituents, and lifestyle choices. They summarize many of the same principles from the "balanced plate" at the beginning of this module or the "healthy plate" from the USDA and other nutritional recommendations of government organizations.
In addition to these nutrients that contribute to particular functions within the human body, fiber is the mostly undigestible component of food that moves through the human digestive tract but also provides remarkable benefits. Undigestible cell wall components of plant foods (fruit membranes, bean and grain seed hulls, most of the plant cell wall, etc.) are examples of dietary fiber. In addition to its famous role in avoiding constipation by moving masses of foodstuffs through the digestive tract as a bulking agent, fiber helps to feed beneficial gut bacteria that produce beneficial substances. Over the last few decades fiber consumption associated with the benefits of avoiding certain cancers, heart disease, and diabetes. Emerging knowledge regarding fiber highlights the role played by the gut microbiome --many billions of non-human cells that inhabit our digestive tract in promoting human health and avoiding disease. These cells are more in number than the human cells in our body, due to the small size of bacteria compared to human cells. Much like the other areas of nutrition described here, the importance of fiber links directly to the importance of eating a varied diet with whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. It is interesting to view fiber and these microbes not as a direct nutrient for human life processes, but as a "helper nutrient" or "catalyst" for human nutrition. Dietary fiber is relatively inert as a source of protein, minerals, or vitamins, but helps our digestive system do its job.
For more on the role of fiber and nutrition generally in an accessible format, you can see the following page: "Dietary Fibre" [7] from the British Nutrition Foundation.
In this assessment, you will use an online diet assessment tool to test how different foods contribute to the total nutrients in a daily diet. You will follow along in the instruction sheet, and log the nutrient content (e.g. calories, total fat, vitamin C) for each diet option in an excel spreadsheet, to be able to compare the diets.
Download both the instructions and worksheet [8] (word doc) and the excel spreadsheet [9] for logging the results. The spreadsheet has color-coding of cells to transform the data you log into a color that indicates deficiency or sufficiency, which will help you to interpret the result.
We will use the tool My Food Record [10] for this assessment. Important: you should use the "one-day analysis" under the "analyze" tab so that you do not have to create an account and can just log in as a guest. You should open this online nutrition assessment tool in an adjoining window or a different browser so you can see the instructions for the assessment and the online tool at the same time.
Please submit your assignment in Module 3 Formative Assessment in Canvas.
In module 3.2., we will incorporate some of the basic information about healthy diets presented above in module 3.1 with the exploration of food systems that you have made throughout the course. In particular, we want to highlight (1) the challenges of malnutrition and low food access for impoverished populations around the world, which can represent a failure of adaptive capacity of human societies to providing a socially sustainable future; (2) the phenomena of low food access for marginalized areas of the "developed world", which can take the form of what are called ‘food deserts’ without easily accessible healthy foods; (3) The rise of so-called chronic and nutrition-related ‘diseases of affluence’ related to caloric overconsumption (which in fact also affect poor, urban populations worldwide as well). We also will examine the potential food-system responses to these challenges, and how different food system types contribute to these challenges and their solutions.
Food insecurity, or the inability to access sufficient, culturally appropriate food for adequate nutrition, is a major problem for the poorest segments of the world’s population, the 1 billion or so people who live on less than two dollars per day (Food Security and Insecurity are more fully addressed in module 11). These poorest members of society often face chronic malnutrition, which some call undernutrition to distinguish it from nutrition diseases of overconsumption or poor food choices, which are considered malnutrition of a different type. Undernutrition is sometimes coupled with nutrition-related illnesses and long work hours in paid employment or smallholder agriculture on small and/or degraded land bases that often accompany poorer farms in rural areas. Undernutrition represents a failure of human societies and food systems to create access to a minimum standard of diet quality that can allow all human beings to live to their potential. In addition, the difficulty posed by undernutrition may fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable members of society: women, children, and the disabled and elderly. A particular burden is faced by caregivers of children (women, and increasingly grandparents) to both provide adequate care and feeding and take on the role of earning money to farm or buy food.
Organizations who work with these populations have worked to identify barriers to better care and feeding practices because it has been recognized that if the allocation of food within households is not equitable, simply increasing farm production or access to food can sometimes fail to increase consumption of healthy foods by vulnerable groups in households. Increasing the direct involvement and knowledge of parents and other caregivers in nutrition practices, and focusing attention on children under five years of age can help to improve nutrition outcomes and child growth in many poor households. These aspects of care, feeding, nutrition, and harmonization with local culture are important parts of food security referred to as the utilization component (this will be further addressed in module 11.2). As an example of the sort of trade-off that can occur between agricultural and nutrition goals in improving livelihoods, agricultural methods that are introduced to improve soil quality or increase agricultural income can be labor-intensive and must take care not to place undue additional time burdens on caregivers, who may then neglect the care and nutrition needs of children.
The challenges of chronic malnutrition are often linked in rural food-producing households to small land bases and/or degraded soils, which is of concern to us because it is a highly problematic case that links human system factors in the form of poverty, and natural system factors in the form of the degradation of earth's ecosystems. As will be described further in module 10.2, the coupling of malnutrition and soil degradation can form a ‘poverty trap’ for rural households, where unproductive soils demand large amounts of labor for small yields, with limited alternative options for food production or employment because of inequality -- or lack of social sustainability -- in the local and global human system. In this way, degraded soils have particular bearing on malnutrition because of the additional work and expenditure of calories required to coax yields from degraded land, which both deepens issues of food deficit and malnutrition, and can translate to expansion of the land area under degrading practices, or contribute to continued production at the lowest level that soil will allow. These factors can trap households in poverty. Such a situation can also translate into the migration of a smallholder household in search of more lucrative activities, which often means a dramatic change in diet towards more urban and processed foods, even if it changes the overall income possibilities of a family and can be considered as an adaptive response to food shortage and vulnerability.
A second major issue facing modern food systems is chronic diet-related disease that results from calorie overconsumption, often linked to increasing rates of obesity in societies around the world. The major chronic conditions related to calorie overconsumption are heart disease and type II or “old-age” (later onset) diabetes (see Fig. 3.2.1 for a global map of diabetes incidence). These have been called “diseases of affluence” because they tend to increase in prevalence as countries increase in material wealth, with a combined increase in meat and calorie availability along with more sedentary jobs and lifestyles.
The dominant role of the globalized, corporate food system in these societies (see module 10.1 for the typology of food systems) means that processed foods (e.g. mass-produced “non-food” snacks and sweetened beverages, prepared frozen meals, fast food, pasta) occupy a larger and large part of the diet of typical consumers in these societies. To save cost and maintain demand, processed fats, sugar, and salt, are used as low-cost ingredients in these foods (e.g. corn syrup, oil by-product from the cattle and cotton industries) As has been described by food writers such as Michael Pollan, the prevalence of these diet choices means that consumers eat a large proportion of “empty calories” without fiber, high-quality fats, sufficient vitamins, and minerals, or in some cases adequate protein. Although high-calorie and fatty restaurant foods have been common for generations, at a whole food system level the prevalence of these foods, and the way they have been normalized in such concepts as “the American diet” (which upwardly mobile consumers in many other countries aspire to) are of great concern because they provide a dominant range of food choices that are not consistent with human health. This is especially so as consumers become more urban and many (though not all) expend fewer calories in manual labor related to farming. The increased prevalence of calorie excess has produced increasing rates of obesity in North America and Europe. (Fig. 3.2.2 below)
The “double burden”: chronic diseases in poor economies: Moreover, the term “diseases of affluence” is misleading because it is, in fact, poor people in industrialized countries as well as the developing world that face the greatest impact of these diseases. Empty calories are often very cheap calories for poorer sectors around the world, so the consumption of processed or dominantly carbohydrate diets with insufficient whole grains, fruits, and vegetables is more common among the poor. In addition, poorer households often are less able to pay for the expensive consequences of these diseases in the middle-aged and elderly (e.g. insulin provision for diabetics, the consequences of heart attack and stroke in the elderly). Ironically the same poorer sectors in poorer parts of the world and even within the United States can simultaneously face the issues of “traditional malnutrition” (i.e undernutrition, insufficient consumption of vitamins, iron, zinc, calories), especially among children and women, as well as diseases of overconsumption of empty calories. This ironic pairing of food system dysfunction has been called the “double burden” on developing countries by food policy experts. It also acts, at a national level, to reduce the overall income of a country by impairing the productivity of its human population (Figure 3.2.3, below).
Food deserts: Within industrialized countries, food system analysts have noted that the marketing model of the globalized food system has focused on suburban supermarkets that are able to capture profits from middle and high-income consumers. This model is profitable for food distribution companies but has the effect of not adequately serving either inner-city poor populations and the rural poor, who face difficulties in physically getting to distant supermarkets. Fast food and high-priced, smaller food markets with a preponderance of processed and unhealthy foods are the only food options in many poorer parts of the United States and other industrialized countries. These areas of low food access for healthy, reasonably priced foods are called food deserts. You will explore these more with a mapping tool in the summative assessment for this module.
For more information on the "double burden" around the world, you can read the online resource from the World Health Organization, " The Economic Impact of Chronic Diseases [11] "
Although the modern globalized food system is highly dynamic and able to move enormous quantities of food and generate economic activity at a huge scale in response to global demand, the issues of poor diets, malnutrition and constrained food access we have described here are sobering issues that human societies need to confront. From the earliest days of civilization, food has been at once (1) a fundamental human requirement and human right; (2)a source of livelihood and a business as well as (3) the common property of cultures and ethnicities. The rise of a globalized food system, however, has brought new patterns into play because food has become an increasingly fiscalized commodity and experience.“Fiscalized” means that the provision of a fast food item, a food service delivery to a restaurant, or a supermarket buying experience (vs. a traditional regional open-air market, for example) are increasingly not only interactions among farmers, truckers, shopkeepers, and consuming households. Instead, the activities of production, distribution, and consumption within food systems become more and more integrated into the trade and investment patterns of the global economy. Food production, trade, and sales have been absorbed into the purview of profit-driven corporations that seek maximum value for stockholders. These stockholders are in turn citizens, organizations, and even governments that also participate by profiting from the functioning of the global system, demonstrating the involvement of common citizens in this system as well. Food activists, policymakers, and advocates of concepts like “agriculture of the middle” (see module 10.1) have argued that this new corporate character of the food system increasingly creates a food system that has an incentive to ignore important values like food access equity, just treatment of producers and workers, healthy diets, and environmental sustainability as the elements of the three "legs" of sustainability (see Module 1). However, reform movements within the globalized food system also demonstrate that it is able to pay attention to human nutrition goals and environmental sustainability.
In fact, the food system is not a completely unfettered capitalist enterprise.& Examining any food packaging shows the degree to which food is subject to regulation and oversight by the government. Food safety scares and health inspections of restaurants show the close attention paid to the acute impact (if not always the chronic impact over time) of unhealthy food. Education efforts promoting healthy choices in diet and exercise are regularly heard from both government organizations and private advocacy organizations: for example, state cooperative extension agencies, universities, and public service announcements. The efforts to label calories on restaurant menus and the movement of food service companies and local restaurants towards healthy options in menus show the growing awareness and movement of food demand towards healthy options. And many supermarket chains are making substantial efforts to include more local and regionally produced foods and promote healthy diets and nutrition as part of the communication to consumers.
In part, these changes show the changing awareness of the problems in the modern “American diet” among the public, brought on by food activists and authors about the food system. And on-the-ground marketing initiatives for values-based value chains such as those promoted by local and regional food system advocates include improving access to healthier foods like whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. For middle- and higher-income consumers with access to the abundance of foods in typical supermarkets and farmer’s markets around the world, this can incentivize better choices about well-rounded diets. In many cases, these healthier diets also include less reliance on meat because of its water footprint and adverse impacts on health when eaten in excess. One essential question, however, is how these efforts to improve food choices and access can expand their reach to poorer consumers and those who live in food deserts, either by improving geographic access, low-cost alternatives, or income opportunities to these consumers. You’ll explore this question of food equity more in the summative assessment for this module, regarding food deserts and examples of organizations in your capstone regions that are promoting healthy food choices and production.
The capstone project, which is introduced at this time in the course and requires you to begin thinking about the food system of a particular focus region, is an opportunity to think about food access and nutrition in your example region. As part of this project, you may want to see some examples of how local governments and organizations of citizens are promoting healthier diets. This may help you to propose similar strategies for food systems. One example you may look into is the website for the Toronto Food Strategy [12] (a part of the municipal government of Toronto, Canada) and the way that their activities are coordinated with the Toronto Food Policy Council [13] (a volunteer study/action and advocacy organization). Many states, counties, and cities in the United States have organizations and government efforts similar to these examples.
At the end of module 2, you read about alternative food systems and the relocalization of food production and distribution as one of the emerging future proposals in the history of food. These efforts, which will be revisited in a typology of current food systems in module 10, are an important source of ideas and initiatives to increase sustainable food production methods and equitable relations between consumers and producers. Local and regional food systems and initiatives have been promoted as ways to retain economic benefits and jobs within regional contexts. Organic and sustainable production methods often form a part of these movements and seek to reduce the environmental impacts of food production. Organic food is, in fact, a documented way to reduce exposure to pesticide residues in foods, which is of concern to many consumers. Food such as fruits and vegetables, which is fresher when it is consumed, which can be the case for locally produced food, is also likely to have a greater content of vitamins and other health-promoting components. However, others have pointed out that at a global level, the optimal freshness of produce, or a complete absence of pesticides, can be of smaller benefit to health in the overall food supply than would be, say, orienting diets away from processed fats or towards greater vegetable consumption or plant-based oils. This more incremental approach suggests that it is important to target low-hanging fruit like availability of lower-cost vegetables and higher-fiber diets to more of the worlds' population, rather than just playing up potential benefits from foods that are local or produced with fewer or no pesticides. It is also important to point out that there can be much confusion among consumers on whether all organic food is locally produced (it's not) or whether local food is always organically produced (also not true).
In summary, given the much smaller size of these local and alternative food initiatives in comparison to the global food system, and also the scale of the problems of malnutrition and unhealthy diets, it may be important to put potential benefits of local and/or organically produced foods in the context of the overall challenges of the food system. For example, in the case of an urban food desert where only low dietary quality processed foods are available, increasing the availability of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains consumed using a number of strategies may be a more viable food system strategy to pursue than promoting locally or organically produced foods as a sole strategy. These multiple strategies could, in fact, rely on greater supermarket access and food streams from the globalized food system along with seasonal access to farmers' markets for local produce. Home and community gardens can also complement and reinforce strategies for healthy eating. In addition, organizations of farmers using organic and other more sustainable methods have often acted as important allies in local food system settings for promoting healthier diets. As we will see throughout this course, the nutrition and sustainability outcomes emerging from the interacting parts of the food system are complex, and we can't always go with a single alternative to provide the best outcomes.
Please view this short video from the "Feeding the nine billion" project of Professor Evan Fraser at the University of Guelph. He argues for the importance of local, alternative food systems but also acknowledges the issues of scale that make global food systems an important aspect of diet and nutrition for the foreseeable future. This is not just about nutrition -- he is also reviewing many of the themes of food and sustainability we will be covering in the course and the relationships between human and natural systems as part of feeding humanity.
Hello, my name is Evan Fraser and I work at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. This video series shows that climate change, population growth, and high energy prices mean that farmers may struggle to produce enough food for all of humanity over the next generation. This video looks at how strong local food systems can help us overcome this problem. Many argue that because modern farms use a lot of energy and cause a lot of pollution, our food systems will prove unable to meet the rising demands of the global population.
These arguments go like this. Today a handful of large corporations control the vast majority of the world's food trade. In doing so, they make a huge amount of money by using farming systems that damage the environment, exploit workers, and displace traditional farmers. By contrast, food systems based on local, diverse, and small farms that use few chemical inputs like pesticides or fertilizers, are more sustainable, equitable, and democratic. This is because when producers and consumers know each other and interact, then the entire community has a say in how food is produced. This should mean that farmers receive a decent income since they will receive a higher percentage of the value of the food they produce. And they should also protect the environment better because consumers will be okay with paying more for food they know isn't covered with polluting sprays. Also, because food is produced and consumed in the same region, the amount of fossil fuels burned for transportation should go down. Goodbye processed cheese and vegetables from the southern hemisphere. And hello locally produced seasonal dishes.
Those of us in the rich parts of the world probably associate these ideas with the 100-mile diet. In the developing world, these ideas are often described as food sovereignty and are promoted by La Via Campesina, an international movement advocating that consumers and small-scale producers work together to take control of their food. Many, however, question whether this vision of alternative food systems can provide a viable food security strategy for humanity's growing population. For instance, while there is a huge disagreement among scientists, many point out that farms using alternative methods tend to have lower yields when compared with conventional farms. This means that many scientists worry that if we're going to feed a growing population using the alternative farming practices promoted by the local food movement, we’ll either need more farmland or we'll have to find ways of cutting down on our consumption and waste.
A second common criticism leveled against the promoters of alternative food systems is that whenever alternative farms try to grow bigger, they end up looking just like conventional farms. But do these criticisms mean alternative local food systems have no place in the 21st Century? I don’t think so. Even if local alternative food systems don’t feed all of us all of the time, it doesn’t mean there is no role for such systems as a component of a secure and resilient food security strategy. Local alternative systems add diversity to our farming landscapes and diversity is very important because alternative farming practices often provide the template to help improve the design of more mainstream systems. Alternative food systems, especially in poor regions of the world, provide a buffer between consumers and the volatility of the international market, while also empowering people by giving them some control over their food.
Finally, having local farms integrated into the fabric of urban life connects city dwellers with their food, making them more aware of the ecosystems on which we all depend. They provide habitat for wildlife, they trap stormwater before it damages people’s homes, and they should be beautiful. Therefore, my own reading of the debate around alternative farming systems tells me that to be sustainable, we must support local food systems that use alternative agricultural practices. We need to do this as consumers, as well as through policy that should foster local food systems by making sure farmers have access to processing facilities and markets. But we must also realize that local and alternative won’t feed us all. We’ll be relying on conventional farming systems that produce huge amounts of food in the world’s breadbaskets for the foreseeable future, albeit with high fossil fuel inputs. So what we need is a balanced approach. Our food security will be enhanced if all of us are able to draw from both global and local systems.
If you’re interested in learning more about this and other topics on feeding 9 billion, you can check out the other videos in this series. Also, my recent book “Empires of Food”, goes into these topics in detail and you can, of course, find me on Facebook and Twitter, where I regularly post news on global food security. Finally, if there’s anything in this video that you want to follow up on, head over to www.feedingninebillion.com [14], where I’ve posted all the scripts I’ve used in these videos, along with background references, and opened up an online discussion where you can weigh in with your own thoughts on anything you’ve just heard.
By now you may be forming the correct impression that a better diet and nutrition around the world is a matter of finding a “happy medium” for consumers between food shortage on the one hand, and excessive consumption of unhealthy foods on the other hand. That is, consumers in poorer sectors and societies eat too little fruits, vegetables, high-quality fats and proteins and in the worst case even insufficient calories. Meanwhile, wealthier consumers and even some of the urban poor eat excessive quantities of low-quality calories and fats in relation to relatively sedentary lifestyles. The results are serious chronic malnutrition (undernutrition and nutrient deficiencies, specifically) at one end of the diet spectrum and chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes at the overconsumption end of the same spectrum. In addition, a high-meat diet and millions of acres in crops to feed beef cattle and pigs creates a water-consuming and polluting food sector of the economy to support these diets, as seen in previous modules. Therefore, increasingly there has been a movement to unite concerns about the environmental impacts of food with the problematic diet and nutrition outcomes from modern high meat and processed food diets. The reading below from food columnist Michael Pollan addresses these principles for a happy medium in diets.
Additional Reading
Michael Pollan, Unhappy Meals [15] New York Times Magazine, January 28, 2007. This reading starts with Pollan's by now somewhat famous recipe for a healthy diet: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." and then expands on this principle.
In order to address the need for this "happy medium", a number of scientists and activists globally have enunciated the interesting principle of the demitarian diet [16]1, in which consumers commit to reducing their consumption of meat products, short of adopting vegan and vegetarian diets. The prefix demi- comes from French for “half” and reflects the principle that consumers in high-income societies and sectors need to at least halve their consumption of meats, to produce better health and environmental impacts, especially the impacts on nitrogen pollution and greenhouse gases from fossil fuels in agriculture (more on this in the following modules). The demitarian diet and its proponents are primarily focused on the environmental sustainability of first-world diets. Nevertheless, we can extend this concept to the third world to say that populations eating diets of poverty will receive benefit from increasing their intake of legumes, fish, meat, vegetables, and other high-quality nutrient sources. Populations at risk from undernutrition may see dramatic positive effects from even slight increases in consumption of these high-quality foods that are often lacking in circumstances of poverty. This is because even small quantities of meat, eggs, and other animal products along with legumes, fruits, and nuts, can be very high-density sources of protein, Iron, Zinc, Vitamin A, and high-quality fats. Because of this nutrient-density, animal protein (e.g. poultry, fish, eggs) as well as legume crops (e.g. bean, pigeon pea), vegetables (e.g. sweet potato, collards, carrots), and fruits (e.g. papaya, mango, avocado) therefore feature prominently in nutrition interventions of government and other organizations.
1 The Barsac Declaration [17] highlights the demitarian diet concept.
The Food Access Research Atlas has been created as an online mapping tool by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is available at USDA Economic Research Center: The Food Access Research Atlas [18]. The atlas has been designed to present a spatial overview of food access indicators for low-income and other census tracts using different measures of supermarket accessibility. We are focusing on food access because the ability to access a full complement of foods at reasonable prices via supermarkets and other more diverse food sales outlets is one of the main impediments to improved diet among poor households in the United States. The atlas presents an online, zoomable map that you can use to understand food access in different districts of the United States (divided by census tracts). Local and regional data can also be downloaded. When it is time to consider food access in capstone regions in Peru (capstone regions outside the United States) we will present some alternative resources below.
First, go to Food Access Research Atlas [19] for the description of the food atlas, including the definition of a "food desert".
Please read these first few short sections in this description regarding the food atlas and pay attention to how a food desert is defined:
Now download the worksheet for the summative assessment [20] where you will see the questions for the assessment. These are also reproduced below to more easily understand the process of the assessment.
Go to the Food Access Research Atlas [18]. Read the brief overview points on the page and then click on "Enter the Map". Then work to answer the questions on the worksheet. The questions are shown here but the spaces to answer are given on the worksheet.
For U.S.-based capstone regions: Look at this region in the food access atlas mapping tool, and make notes about whether there are food deserts (e.g. the rough percentage, as above), whether these are in urban or rural areas, and ideas about why these deserts might exist.
For other regions not listed or adequately addressed on the WFP site: find one resource that speaks to food access in your region and describe their findings and how you think they come to these conclusions via a methodology.
[1] Chapter 6, Re-Storing America’s Food Deserts in Winne, M. (2008). Closing the food gap: Resetting the table in the land of plenty. Beacon Press.
Please submit your assignment in Module 3 Summative Assessment in Canvas.
Your assignment will be evaluated based on the following rubric. The maximum grade for the assignment is 36 points.
Criteria | Possible points awarded |
---|---|
Short answer questions one through five, correct use of mapper and interpretation of the map | 10 points |
Assessment of Houston food desert situation and sufficiently detailed suggestions drawn from reading | 10 points |
Additional learning and new strategies are drawn from Radio Clip "Houston Matters" | 5 points |
Description of food access in or near the capstone region | 3 points |
Description of efforts to improve food access in capstone region | 3 points |
Overall writing style, grammar, spelling | 5 points |
We hope that Module 3 of this course has given you a good grounding in both the basic nutrition needs of human populations, problematic trends in nutrition around the world such as unhealthy diets, and the human system factors that represent major challenges for the social sustainability of food systems. In this learning, we've applied concepts (such as social sustainability and human versus natural systems within food systems) from the first two modules. We also are providing you a grounding for human nutrition to keep in mind as the course dives into the natural system factors (water, soils, crops, climate, agricultural ecosystems) in the second section of the course on Environmental Dynamics and Drivers. And lastly and very importantly, this module is designed to launch your understanding of food systems and food access in a capstone region that you will be analyzing in your capstone project so that you can propose sustainability strategies for these regions.
You have reached the end of Module 3. Double-check the to-do list on the Module 3 Roadmap [25] to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Module 4.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/1202
[2] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/994
[3] http://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/1199
[4] http://www.thenutritionsource.org
[5] http://www.health.harvard.edu
[6] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod3/Human%20nutrition%20in%20the%20developing%20world%201997.pdf
[7] https://www.nutrition.org.uk/healthyliving/basics/fibre.html
[8] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Formative_3.1_worksheet_Edit_August2016.docx
[9] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/FormEvaluation_Module3_1.xlsx
[10] http://www.myfoodrecord.com/
[11] https://web.archive.org/web/20220223175956/https://www.who.int/chp/working_paper_growth%20model29may.pdf?ua=1
[12] https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care/health-programs-advice/toronto-food-strategy/
[13] http://tfpc.to/
[14] http://www.feedingninebillion.com
[15] http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/
[16] http://www.nine-esf.org/node/281/index.html
[17] http://www.nine-esf.org/files/Barsac%20Declaration%20V5.pdf
[18] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas.aspx
[19] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/about-the-atlas.aspx
[20] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod3/Geog%203%20Summative%20Assessment%203%20Worksheet_Revised090519.docx
[21] https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/food_supply/student_materials/1213
[22] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/2013/08/22/207302/food-deserts-in-houston/
[23] https://www.wfp.org/countries/peru
[24] http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/ap054e/ap054e00.pdf
[25] http://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/1133