Food is essential to human survival. As a species, we use a lot of resources to ensure an adequate supply of food for ourselves. However having enough food is not the whole story. As we have developed new technologies, so have our food production and consumption patterns changed. Just as dramatically, what we think of as food has changed too.
The importance of food to the maintenance of life is twofold - supply enough energy for essential bodily functions and supply enough beneficial chemicals for health. Energy is measured in calories, while the chemical content is denoted in nutrition tables. There are two types of nutrients, macro- and micronutrients. Macronutrients are the building blocks of the human body and also the stuff of fad diets - proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Micronutrients are more complicated and their importance was not recognized until fairly recently. Some of the important ones are assorted vitamins and minerals that maintain healthy body functions and prevent from or reduce the incidence of various diseases.
Historically, producing foods with sufficient caloric content and appropriate nutrient properties has been challenging. However, with the advent of modern agriculture and the Green Revolution, the calorie problem has been solved. Today the world produces more than enough calories to adequately satisfy the energy needs of every one of the more than seven billion fellow humans on the planet. However, appropriate nutrition remains a challenge. There are two types of inadequate nutrition - malnutrition and undernutrition. Malnutrition generally refers to improper consumption which can be both insufficient or overabundant. Undernutrition, however, refers specifically to the lack of necessary nutrients and calories in the diet. Consider the following facts. In the world today (2010-13):
- Nearly two billion people suffer from malnutrition and/or undernutrition.
- Nearly one billion people suffer from obesity.
What does this mean?
Famine is fairly simple. There are many populations around the world that have inadequate access to food supplies. The reasons for this are generally related to environmental contamination or degradation, extreme weather, conflict, and disease.
While famine has been a constant threat to human populations for the vast majority of human history, obesity epidemics are quite modern and unparalleled. This new state of affairs is directly related to modern food production practices and its attendant diet changes.
More than the industrialized revolution, the invention of the tractor marks the beginning of industrialized food production. However, technology has been part and parcel of successful agriculture since the first farmer selected better crops for further cultivation. Today, vast quantities of produce and livestock are produced through elaborately organized, mechanized, and technologically augmented processes that form the backbone of agriculture in the western world.
Produce is generally fertilized and irrigated to increase yields, while in the last quarter century biotechnology has allowed rapid reengineering of plant species for desirable traits such as yield and resistance to disease or chemical agents used for pest control. These practices consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels and precious water resources and are challenging to implement in harsher environmental conditions. However biotechnology promises to help with that problem by engineering species that resist hars environments. It is not immediately apparent what are the costs of such interventions to human and environmental wellbeing. However, these innovation have created an abundant basic food supply for many.
Livestock is now mostly bred in confined areas where space is lacking and are fed augmented diets to decrease fattening time and time to slaughter. The overcrowding and diet combine to cause increased incidence of infections and diseases that are also increase the antibiotic intake of animals. (This itself has public health and ethical implications, but more on that in other posts.) The meat that comes out of this system has a nutrient profile vastly different from that traditionally consumed by humans as part of hunting or livestock rearing by non-intensive means. However, this production style has made meat protein cheap and abundant. As a result, vast numbers of people are able to consume meats on a weekly, if not daily basis across the world.
These are the two main types of food recognized by people for most of human history. However, urbanization has created special supply and transportation needs that were met not so much by innovations in supply and transportation as in food processing and engineering. Science and technology has taken the leading role in food production and displaced the farmer, who is now relegated to the role of commodity extractor. Food is now the domain of chemists.
By refining and processing raw food materials, we have come to increase the shell life and improve the taste profile of foods, but also we have created new types of food divorced from what an adult alive a century ago would recognize as such. This has enormous implications.
Fast food, the pinnacle of food engineering, is rich in calories and macronutrients, has copious amounts of sugar and salt and you can't seem to get enough of it. The reason it tastes so good is that it exploits the human, one that has changed little over the past 500 000 years. Humans, as a species, are not used to having such adequate supplies of fat and sodium, while the brain is conditioned to desire them due to their historical lack in the human diet. However, this nutrient profile and its abundance, combined with the sedentary lifestyle inherent to the developed world, has produced the epidemic of obesity. People who move little, but consume large amounts of calories have gained unhealthy amounts of fat deposits in the body. The increased intake of salt and sugar creates challenges for the body to break down, and we now find ourselves with an epidemic of diabetes and metabolic disease. And all of this comes at a huge cost to our economy, our wellbeing and that of animals and the planet at large.
Food is not what it used to be. Unfortunately, we haven't changed with our perception of it, and our increased incidence of noncommunicable diseases shows us that we have reached the limits of our body to cope with such novel food.
For many years, this used to be the purview of the developed world, but as the developing world has rapidly industrialized and developed, it has grown into the appetites of the developed world. In 2010, the number of people suffering from noncommunicable diseases in the world overtook the number of those with communicable diseases. Lifestyle changes everywhere in the world have created an epidemic.
The solution starts with food. How we produce it, how we process it and how we consume it are the keystones of any solution. We must also remember that it needs to be a sustainable solution that can feed the 15 billion people we expect to have at the end of this century alive on the planet. The changes to our agricultural systems must start now, if we are to avert a deepening of the public health crisis and its attendant social and economic consequences.
More than the industrialized revolution, the invention of the tractor marks the beginning of industrialized food production. However, technology has been part and parcel of successful agriculture since the first farmer selected better crops for further cultivation. Today, vast quantities of produce and livestock are produced through elaborately organized, mechanized, and technologically augmented processes that form the backbone of agriculture in the western world.
Produce is generally fertilized and irrigated to increase yields, while in the last quarter century biotechnology has allowed rapid reengineering of plant species for desirable traits such as yield and resistance to disease or chemical agents used for pest control. These practices consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels and precious water resources and are challenging to implement in harsher environmental conditions. However biotechnology promises to help with that problem by engineering species that resist hars environments. It is not immediately apparent what are the costs of such interventions to human and environmental wellbeing. However, these innovation have created an abundant basic food supply for many.
Livestock is now mostly bred in confined areas where space is lacking and are fed augmented diets to decrease fattening time and time to slaughter. The overcrowding and diet combine to cause increased incidence of infections and diseases that are also increase the antibiotic intake of animals. (This itself has public health and ethical implications, but more on that in other posts.) The meat that comes out of this system has a nutrient profile vastly different from that traditionally consumed by humans as part of hunting or livestock rearing by non-intensive means. However, this production style has made meat protein cheap and abundant. As a result, vast numbers of people are able to consume meats on a weekly, if not daily basis across the world.
These are the two main types of food recognized by people for most of human history. However, urbanization has created special supply and transportation needs that were met not so much by innovations in supply and transportation as in food processing and engineering. Science and technology has taken the leading role in food production and displaced the farmer, who is now relegated to the role of commodity extractor. Food is now the domain of chemists.
By refining and processing raw food materials, we have come to increase the shell life and improve the taste profile of foods, but also we have created new types of food divorced from what an adult alive a century ago would recognize as such. This has enormous implications.
Fast food, the pinnacle of food engineering, is rich in calories and macronutrients, has copious amounts of sugar and salt and you can't seem to get enough of it. The reason it tastes so good is that it exploits the human, one that has changed little over the past 500 000 years. Humans, as a species, are not used to having such adequate supplies of fat and sodium, while the brain is conditioned to desire them due to their historical lack in the human diet. However, this nutrient profile and its abundance, combined with the sedentary lifestyle inherent to the developed world, has produced the epidemic of obesity. People who move little, but consume large amounts of calories have gained unhealthy amounts of fat deposits in the body. The increased intake of salt and sugar creates challenges for the body to break down, and we now find ourselves with an epidemic of diabetes and metabolic disease. And all of this comes at a huge cost to our economy, our wellbeing and that of animals and the planet at large.
Food is not what it used to be. Unfortunately, we haven't changed with our perception of it, and our increased incidence of noncommunicable diseases shows us that we have reached the limits of our body to cope with such novel food.
For many years, this used to be the purview of the developed world, but as the developing world has rapidly industrialized and developed, it has grown into the appetites of the developed world. In 2010, the number of people suffering from noncommunicable diseases in the world overtook the number of those with communicable diseases. Lifestyle changes everywhere in the world have created an epidemic.
The solution starts with food. How we produce it, how we process it and how we consume it are the keystones of any solution. We must also remember that it needs to be a sustainable solution that can feed the 15 billion people we expect to have at the end of this century alive on the planet. The changes to our agricultural systems must start now, if we are to avert a deepening of the public health crisis and its attendant social and economic consequences.
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