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Thinking food: What’s ‘healthy’ and ‘sustainable’?

February 12, 2022

Bowl of sustainable vegetables for vegan diet

Thinking food: What’s ‘healthy’ and ‘sustainable’?

What constitutes a ‘healthy diet’ has been endlessly debated and the advice on eating changes almost year on year. With the dangerous rise in non-communicable diseases (such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes) which has occurred over the last fifty or so years – significantly accelerating from the 1980s onwards with increasing industrialised food production – it has never been more important to think about what you eat.

The rise of veganism has brought a sea-change in how many people eat, even for those who haven’t fully given themselves over to a wholly plant-based diet. ‘Veganuary’, which started in 2014, has been a compelling campaign to change people’s diets, urging them to forego any animal-based food. Veganism is increasing in interest – a recent YouGov poll (commissioned by Veganuary) found that 36% of adults thought that it was ‘admirable’, which implies it is something that many people may think about doing, but only the remarkable would pursue.

Healthy diets don’t come from the overconsumption of processed foods and that goes for veganism as much as for any type of diet. The vegan market has opened up a huge door to industrial food producers and out of it has come a raft of ultra-processed foods: vegan ‘cheese’, fake meat and products that are heavy on salt and additives. Have a good hard look at the Impossible Burger which garnered so much attention when it was introduced – its key ingredient is a ‘vat-grown, genetically engineered form of the heme iron’ called Soy leghemoglobin. It’s important to remember that just because it’s vegan, doesn’t make ultra-processed food healthy.

A vegan or ‘plant-based’ diet, as it is often called, eschews meat, dairy, fish and bugs as well (which are eaten in many parts of the world)…

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Our food system – a health hazard

November 11, 2017

Our food system – a health hazard

People get sick because they work under unhealthy conditions.
People get sick because of contaminants in the water, soil, or air.
People get sick because specific foods they eat are unsafe for consumption.
People get sick because they have unhealthy diets.
People get sick because they can’t access adequate, acceptable food at all times.

A recent report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems identifies these five mechanisms whereby the current food system makes people sick.

The report calls for a reform of the food and farming systems to be made on the grounds of protecting human health. Many of the most severe health are caused by core industrial food and farming practices, such as chemical-intensive agriculture; intensive livestock production and the mass production and mass marketing of ultra-processed foods. They are in turn stimulated by the deregulated global trade.

Because of all interconnections in the complex food system it is not possible to always ascertain exactly the causes of a particular problem, but we know enough to act, according to the report. Even if the industrial food and farming model is not the only cause of the problems, it has clearly failed to provide solutions to them. The health effects are strongly linked to environmental effects and social issues.

It is all too convenient for the industrial food system to place the responsibility of dietary choices with the consumers, when in reality they are the choice architects and they constantly influence consumers to consume highly processed foods made from a limited range of industrial raw materials. In addition they influence both research and policy for their own benefits.

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New Equations of Regions, People, Nature and Food Chains

March 10, 2016

New Equations of Regions, People, Nature and Food Chains

We usually think of geologists as going deep, but when it comes to working through the layers of meaning behind local food, geographer Terry Marsden knows how to dig very deep.

Marsden sees food as a uniquely human enterprise because it, more than anything else we do, relies so much on the relationship between humans and nature. Food is inevitably a product of our social nature, and always different from products, artifacts and commodities that can be isolated from direct relations with nature, he argues.

I appreciate someone who sees that as a starting point of understanding and appreciating food, even though my special interest is food and cities, which are often seen as far removed from nature.

But Marsden’s work is as important for city as countryside dwellers, because cities and countrysides are going to be working together more closely than ever in the food system he predicts to be on the way.

Marsden sees the local food trend that’s developed in Europe and North America over the last 30 years as a sign of a new relationship between food producers and consumers — both of whom are co-producing a new regionalism that puts a high value on food quality, the environment and the human relationships that come to the fore when food is localized.

Unlike some writers who warn of the “local trap” – wherein local food merchandisers masquerade the same old/same old industrial food in a charming new local bottle – Marsden sees local and regional food as an exercise based on integrity on the part of city and countryside people. Both producers and consumers are looking for a way out of reducing food to a commodity, and in the process, reducing themselves and their own relationships to the same lowly status.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Agroecology Can Help Fix Our Broken Food System. Here’s How.

June 19, 2015

Agroecology Can Help Fix Our Broken Food System. Here’s How.

The various incarnations of the sustainable food movement need a science with which to approach a system as complex as food and farming.

Thumb through U.S. newspapers any day in early 2015, and you could find stories on President Obama’s “fast-track” plans for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, antibiotic scares and theworsening California drought. Economists reported on steadily rising income inequality, while minimum-wage food workers took to the picket lines. Americans fled their kitchens and Chipotle welcomed them with farm-friendly appeal. Scientists recorded the warmest winter in history.

These seemingly disconnected events have a common thread: They all are symptoms of a political economy out of kilter with the welfare of the planet and the people who live on it. They are also nestled deep in the way food is grown, distributed and consumed today. What we sometimes call the “agri-food system” is clearly broken — just ask farmworkers and food workers (exploited and underpaid), honeybees (collapsing), forested landscapes (fragmenting), the climate (warming), and the ever-growing number of people without access to nutritious food, or the land and resources with which to produce it.

“Sustainable food” attempts to heal this fragile system, and it’s been a buzzword for three decades. Its mushrooming incarnations — local, organic, biodynamic, fair trade and “slow,” among others — suggest a broad yearning for something better. But modern capitalism is wondrously efficient at disciplining outliers. It hasn’t taken much for the dynamics of competition and price to sweep countercultural ideas into the industrial mainstream, forcing enterprises in many – not all – sustainable food niches to expand in size, adopt monoculture techniques and replicate the basic model of industrial overproduction.

What some have described as “input-substitution organic,” for example, swaps out chemical inputs for biological ones. These farms are therefore marginally better in terms of pollution but have barely budged the needle on monoculture cropping, not to mention labor issues. In any of these alternatives, price is prohibitive: Most low- to middle-income earners — and this includes most workers in the food system — cannot afford to buy the fruits of this so-called food revolution.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

4 Innovative Community Food Projects Empowering Low-Income Residents

January 7, 2015

4 Innovative Community Food Projects Empowering Low-Income Residents

There are many community food organizations working hard to create a more sustainable and equitable food system. Through urban farms, school gardens, school lunch programs and more, these groups are alleviating food insecurity and building food justice in America. WhyHunger, which supports community-based organizations that seek solutions to underlying causes of hunger and connect people with quality food, has been documenting these community members’ stories through its project, Community Voices.

These projects have been made possible in part through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Food Project, which funds projects to increase food security. Here are four stories of organizations working to empower low-income communities with access to fresh and healthy food:

Community Services Unlimited

Community Services Unlimited (CSU) has been serving South Los Angeles for decades through its food justice efforts. CSU now has a number of programs. The first, From the Ground Up, is a youth training internship developing leaders in food and social justice. Another is Growing Healthy, which works with younger children to teach them nutrition and the basic tenets of food security and food justice. The third program is the Home Garden project, which encourages, educates and provides resources for residents wishing to grow their own food. And lastly, there is the Village Market Place, a social enterprise program that puts all of CSU’s other three programs to work in the community.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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