Food control or food democracy? Re-engaging nutrition with society and the environment

Abstract

Objective: To explore the terms on which nutrition should engage with the global challenges ahead. Design: Analysis of current orientation of nutrition and policy. Result: Nutrition faces four conceptual problems. The first is that nutrition has fissured into two broad but divergent directions. One is biologically reductionist, now to the genome; the other sees nutrition as located in social processes, now also requiring an understanding of the physical environment. As a result, nutrition means different things to different people. The second problem is a misunderstanding of the relationship between evidence, policy and practice, assuming that policy is informed by evidence, when there is much evidence to the contrary. The third problem is that nutrition is generally blind to the environment despite the geo-spatial crisis over food supply, which will determine who eats what, when and how. How can we ask people to eat fish when fish stocks are collapsing, or to eat wisely if water shortage dominates or climate change weakens food security? The fourth problem is that, in today's consumerist and supermarketised world, excess choice plus information overload may be nutrition's problem, not solution. Conclusion: Nutrition science needs to re-engage with society and the environment. The alternative is, at best, to produce an individualised approach to public health or, at worst, to produce brilliant science but be policy-irrelevant.

Development of the Spanish Healthy Food Reference Budget for an adequate social participation at the minimum

“…RB provide a practical approach to address budgetary and cooking skills limitations, which are major drawbacks against the adoption of healthy eating habits, especially among low SES families (9,21) . An excellent example is the case of Belgium, where the RB have even resulted in the creation of two recipe books for economical and healthy meals (51,52) .…”

Integrating food security into public health and provincial government departments in British Columbia, Canada

“…Food security health promotion initiatives within Public Health, and other government departments in BC were analysed, examining the three sectors engaged in the "contested space" of food policy -government, civil society and the food supply chain (Lang, 2005a). As the study investigates only government initiatives, by definition all of these initiatives have government involvement.…”

“…In translating the notions of reconfiguration and integrated top down/bottom up approaches into a practical model, Lang's (2005a) food policy triangle was used as a beginning point. It was useful in examining relationships and power distribution between the stakeholders and institutions, but interviewees found it too crude.…”

“…Public Health services in the province of British Columbia are delivered by the Provincial Ministry of Health (Population and Public Health) and the six Regional Health Authorities. (Lang, 2005a) State Civil Society Supply Chain…”

“…policy instruments) of food security policy in the BC government are analyzed by contrasting and comparing them to the Hamm and Bellows' (2003) definition of community food security 2 . Next, the research utilizes Lang's (2005a) simple food policy triangle (Figure 1), which proposes a starting point for food policy as a contested space between stakeholders from government, civil society, and the food supply chain. Using the triangle and the sectors within it, the research examines relationships between the stakeholders and institutions, and explores the distribution of power between them.…”