The Value of Food: A Necessary Rhetoric

Abstract

Food is a basic necessity of life. It provides nutrients, which in turn provide energy, required not only for daily activity through various physiological functions, but for growth, repair and immunity. It follows logically that with optimal nutrition, health is granted and ill-health distanced. This, however, is not the premise from which the general populace, the medical and pharmaceutical establishments, and governments discuss health. The populace eats to taste and satisfaction; the healthcare apparatus exists to attend to the sick; and the health budget is on hospitals, equipment, drugs and emoluments of the health work force. The attention given to the content of food by the community, the space occupied by food and nutrition in medical school curricula, and policies on food and nutrition by governments are testaments to this. In this write-up, the value of food is illustrated with a clinical case, and recommendation to raise the attention paid to food and nutrition from the current level is made.