Food, health and nutrition policy

Question 1

What does a food system include? What does food policy refer to?

Answer 1

A food system includes the path that food travels from field to fork.

Food policies refer to the policies that shape who eats what, when and how. The remit of food policy is broad and include agricultural policies as well as those that affect the whole food supply chain

Production, processing, packaging, transport, marketing, consumption, waste.

Question 2

What is shaping the global food system?

Answer 2

• Relience on imported foods
  (staple food subsidies, wide variety of fresh and processed foods)
• Centralization of distribution : Supermarkets
  (Brokers, distributors, retailers gain power)
• Bio-economies
  (increasing household waste, decreasing post-harvest waste)
• Technological changes
  ( improved animal care, improved storage and transport conditions, industrialization of farming )
• Climate change and environmental degradation
  (deforestation, soil fertility, changing water tables, carbon emission quotas and taxes)
• Energy costs
  (increasing production and transport costs, biofuels influence)

Question 3

Why do we want to understand the relationship between the global food system and human health?

Answer 3

• Economic costs of poor health

- Productivity of population

Question 4

What is the definition of malnutrition?

Answer 4

Deficiencies, excess, or imbalance in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients

Question 5

What is food security?

Answer 5

When all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious foo to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Question 6

What is food insecurity?

Answer 6

The inability to acquire or consume an adequate diet quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so

Question 7

What is an example of policy addressing food insecurity in Canada?

Answer 7

Nutrition North Canada

A Government of Canada subsidy program launched in 2011

• Help making perishable, nutritious food more affordable and more accessible for people living in isolated northern communities
• Subsidy is provided to retailers across the North and food suppliers in southern Canada

Question 8

What is the double burden of malnutrition?

Answer 8

The coexistence of undernutrition along with overweight and obesity, or diet-related non-communicable diseases (e.g. obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some forms of cancer)

Question 9

What is the nutrition transition characterized by?

Answer 9

• A national phenomenon
• Economic development
• Changes to diets and physical activity
• Increasing prevalence of chronic disease

Question 10

What are some drivers and distribution of the nutrition transition?

Answer 10

1. globalization
   
   • Developing countries
   • Economic and technological changes
   • Urbanization
2. Lifestyle changes
   
   • Different occupation structures
   • Daily survival requires less energy
   • Limited leisure physical activity
3. Food availability and cost
   
   • Structural changes and global food market
   • Access to non-traditional foods
   • Access to a variety of foods all year
   • Increase in oils, caloric sweeteners, animal food sources
4. Advertising and marketing
   
   • “coca-colonization”

Question 11

What are some negative impacts of growing demand for animal protein?

Answer 11

• Environment: Land, water and biodiversity
• Agro-biodiversity and animal welfare
• Climate change
• Economic accessiblity
• Socio-cultural acceptability
• Human health: nutritional well-being and lifestyle