Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) as “a condition in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences
for an active and healthy life.” According to Mustafa Koc’s presentation, food security
should be viewed as both a societal objective as well as a discourse where the need to for
looking at the bigger picture is an evident theme. He explores reasons as to why there is food
insecurity and alludes back to the fact that food is often seen as a commodity, not as a human
right. This rights-based perception of food security relates to that presented in Oxfam’s
Handbook of Development and Relief where it stresses that every human being has the right
to adequate and affordable food, and that both hunger and malnutrition are forms of injustice
that must be eliminated by every possible means. That being said, food security has a direct
link to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger. However, producing a sufficient quantity of food to feed our expanding
global population while trying to stabilize our climate system, presents some great challenges.
Food system, as defined by Mustafa Koc in his guest lecture presentation, is a “complex
web of social relations, processes, structures and institutional arrangements that cover human
interaction with nature and with other humans throughout the food cycle from production to
consumption and even further.” Our current global food system is not sustainable. It does not
provide adequate nutrition to everyone worldwide, yet it allows for some populations to
over-consum...
... middle of paper ...
...cause and effect relationship of climate and human activity, and climate and human need, the ability to redesign the way we produce and cultivate food staples can be created. With this ability the longevity of agricultural systems can influence a decrease in food prices, in turn increasing the number of food secure populations.
Works Cited
1 http://www.climatechange-foodsecurity.org/africa.html
2 http://www.wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/05/24/000426104_20120524164749/Rendered/PDF/690860ESW0P1050Climate0Change0Risks.pdf
3 http://www.farmingfirst.org/2010/07/climate-change-risks-and-food-security-in-bangladesh/
4 http://www.farmingfirst.org/2010/07/climate-change-risks-and-food-security-in-bangladesh/
5 http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/Systems-Ag-Report-Brief.pdf
7
Michael Pollan, an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (Michael Pollan), writes in his book In Defense of Food, the dangers of nutritionism and how to escape the Western diet and subsequently most of the chronic diseases the diet imparts. In the chapter “Nutritionism Defined” Pollan defines the term nutritionism. Pollan’s main assertion being how the ideology of nutritionism defines food as the sum of its nutrients, and from this viewpoint Pollan goes on to write how nutritionism divides food into two categories, with each macronutrient divided against each other as either bad or good nutrients, in a bid for focus of our food fears and enthusiasms. Finally, Pollan concludes that with the relentless focus nutritionism places on nutrients and their interplay distinctions between foods become irrelevant and abandoned.
He aspires to logically persuade his audience about the insanity of the way in which food is processed and stored. He comments on the ways by which the imperfections in the food are masked in the kitchen. The author reiterates his experience at the hands of older male chefs and the things he saw and felt while training in the kitchen. He endeavors to debunk the myth that cooking in a large kitchen is anything but noisy and infernal, as portrayed by movies such as “Ratatouille (2007)”. The essayist intends to draw his audience’s attention to the fact that eating is an interaction with the natural world. The writer discloses a story about his son to illustrate the degradation of the definition of food in society today. He prefers to reason with his audience purely through logic. He strives to make his audience see that they both literally and metaphorically digest the planet through
A major issue that is occurring in America is a phenomena known as “food deserts”, most are located in urban areas and it's difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food. Whereas in the past, food deserts were thought to be solved with just placing a grocery store in the area, but with times it has become an issue that people are not picking the best nutritional option. This issue is not only making grocery store in food deserts are practically useless and not really eliminating the issue of food deserts because even when they are given a better nutritional option, and people are not taking it. In my perspective, it takes more than a grocery store to eliminate ‘food deserts’. It's more about demonstrating the good of picking the nutritional option and how it can help them and their families. For example, “Those who live in these areas are often subject to poor diets as a result and are at a greater risk of becoming obese or developing chronic diseases.”(Corapi, 2014).
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
"Food is a medium for life, a dynamic of life, and an expression of the whims, joys, terrors, and histories in life. Food, more than anything else, is life."
In order for us to maintain our lives, we need to consume food to supply nutrient-needs for our bodies. As the global population increased, the demand for food also increased. Increased population led to mass production of foods. However, even with this mass production, in under-developed countries, people are still undernourished. On other hand, in developed and developing countries, people are overfed and suffering from obesity. In addition, the current methods of industrial farming destroy the environment. These problems raised a question to our global food system. Will it be able to sustain our increasing global population and the earth? With this question in my mind, I decided to investigate the sustainability of our current global food system.
...le intimations at the importance of nourishment give insights into the eras in which they were written. Indeed, these purposeful symbols show the pleasure and necessity of food that every being, past, present and future, experiences.
Gonzalez, Julina Roel. ""The Philosophy of Food," Edited by David M. Kaplan." Ed. Michael Goldman. Teaching Philosophy 36.2 (2013): 181-82. Print.
patterns, the eventual destruction of ecosystems, and the rapid rising of sea levels, each event
Food is one of the essentials of life, it is not something that we can choose to eat or not; but rather something we need in order to produce energy and survive. Not only is food essential but also sparse. Until the introduction of large scale agriculture food was something which people needed to forage and hunt. Lack of food has been a source for wars, famine, and starvation; all things we as human beings should strive to avoid.
to say, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plant.” (Pollan,426). In the essay, Food as Thought:
Hunger is the most pressing issue we face. One out of every eight people in the world today suffers from chronic undernourishment caused by food scarcity. 19,000 kids die everyday from hunger. The world has more than 1.5 times enough food to feed everyone on this entire planet although with some people making less than two dollars an hour, it is hardly imaginable to be able to. At least the number of people who die everyday of famine is going down every year because more and more people care. We want to keep this number going down not only by the year, but also by the day. If we want this to happen, we have to take action. Now.
Food insecurity defined, is ‘the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food’ (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2014). This in turn leads to hunger, which can have three possible meanings; 1) ‘the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food; craving appetite, also the exhausted condition caused by want of food’, 2) ‘the want or scarcity of food in a country’, and 3) ‘a strong desire or craving’ (Worldhunger.org, 2014). Food insecurity also leads to malnutrition, with 870 million people in the world or one in eight, suffering from chronic undernourishment (Fao.org, 2014). From this alarmingly high figure, 852 million of these people live in developing countries, making it evident that majority of strategies used to solve this problem should be directed at them (Fao.org, 2014). The world produces enough food to feed everyone, with an estimated amount of 2,720 Kcal per person a day (Worldhunger.org, 2014). The only problem is distri...
Food teaches, or illustrates, something meaningful about life, health, family, and culture. Although food keeps us alive there are many ways we misuse food. We can use the mistreatment of food to learn about our family, our health, and our culture. Abuse and mistreatment of food looks different for each person based on our culture and experiences in life. Ever since I was little, my family looked towards food for comfort. The most prominent time that sticks out to me was when my mom passed away. We were filling the void of our loss with the food we were deciding to eat. We weren’t eating healthy and we didn’t really care what was going into our bodies or how much we were putting in. Along with not eating healthy, we weren’t exercising or watching
Climate change is one of the major issues surfacing earth over the past century. The earth’s temperature has increased over the years leading to detrimental effects on the economic and life sources of people, especially that of agricultural production and livestock. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary (2014), defined climate change as a change in global climate patterns apparent from the mid late 20th century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, (2007) predicts that by 2100 the increase in global average surface temperature may be between 1.8° C and 4.0° C. With increases of 1.5° C to 2.5° C, approximately 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species are expected to be at risk of extinction. Moreover, the IPCC (2007) purported that climate change has severe consequences for food security in developing countries. There are numerous factors that are solely responsible for this change which are both natural and man-made. Climate change has led to a decrease in quality and quantity of plant produce and livestock because of heat stress, drought and an increase in plant and animal diseases.