Glogal Indigestion: Food Insecurity

 Global Indigestion, the Rise of NCDs and Food Insecurity

• Indigestion, Malnutrition and Global Gastro-Politics
• Triple Burden:
• undernutrition
• a condition of not having enough to eat causes wasting
• makes people susceptible to contagious disease 
• stunting height
• impair mental development
• micronutrient deficiency
• lack of specific vitamins
• Vitamin A- blindness
• low iron-anemia
• overweight and obesity
• caused by an unbalanced diet or low nutricion high caloric foods
• susceptible to NCDs
• UN Declaration of Human Rights 1948
• vowed to stop hunger in the word and end it-emergency aid
• Food Insecurity
• the lack of food (from chronic to acute)
• congruent with social inequality and crises
• Causes of food insecurity lie outside of local contexts and within the interconnectedness of global food production
• UN agencies directly involved in food production and distribution, dietary and health issues, emergency aid
• grassroots responses
• from ground up movements of local farmers 
• Top-Down: Gastro-politics of Food Insecurity
• FAO (food and agriculture organization)
• have directly influenced the quantities of food available and their impact on people's health
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• WHO (World Health Organization)
• tasked with looking after the health facing the world and alleviating malnutrition by feeding the world with food with food that meets people's nutritional needs.
• Four Pillars of Food Security
• Availability
• Access
• Stability
• Utilization
• Food Insecurity
• When people do not have significant access to food
• The inadequate physical, social, or economic access to food
• arises from issues concerning governance, the environment, the economy, and production, and the dynamics of demography and society.
• The impact of industrial agriculture "GREEN REVOLUTION"
• environments were transformed, species were augmented or protected, all to accommodate increased production
• food insecurity: decline in food quality, more processing, less crop variety, and longer distances traveled through commodity change, 
• environmental degradation from chemical intensive agriculture.
• compromised future productivity, local biodiversity, and ocean health, and contributed to climate change
• agricultural development in the global south consolidated power of global food industry's transnational corporations- industrial cuisine
• quantity achieved without quality
• Access to land and self-sufficient food production were altered through agricultural industrialization- jeopardizing food security.
• Food Quantity
• Challenge One: Market Instability
• Guatemala (ex) 
• the growing of coffee for export has contributed to food insecurity 
• impacted by fluctuating consumer tastes, large harvests, planatation devistations from fungus, and slow maturation of coffee plants 
• market volitility is a problem
• Generally instability is caused by
• the rise of oil prices increased cost of agrochemicals
• agricultural production shifted away from food into biofeuls and animal feed
• financial speculation on food commodities pushed the cost of food even higher
• increased demand for Westernized processed foods and meat by status-seeking middle classes in countries like Guatemala drove prices higher
• Environmental problems such as droughts , soil erosion, and shrinking aquifers all acted to further escalate food costs.
• Farming subsidies encourage overproduction and tank prices severely impacting small farmers
• Challenge Two: famine
• Shift of analysis and solutions away from natural disasters and toward the social, political, and economic circumstances that disrupt peoples livelihoods.
• famine does not affect people equally- some will starve and some will have plenty
• famine represents the extreme failure of food security requirements; successful food production and distribution-to ensure availability-of food, and societal security to guarantee access to and consequently consumption of, nutrients and safe food. 
• Challenge Three: Climate Change
• 2013- climate change was acknowledged as being the result of human activity
• the promise to feed the world through increased yields had been successful, the cost to the environment, and the social inequality of its access had compromised this success.
• Resettling the FAO Agenda- Sustainable Agriculture
• first sought to address poverty-zero poverty
• then to address hunger-zero hunger
• Food Quality: WHO Agenda
• Challenge One: Overweight and Obesity
• particularly pronounced among indigenous people and the poor
• encourage consumption of alcohol and nutrition poor cheap food
• once "accepted' these industrial foods get integrated into the cultural cuisines and are difficult to eliminate or even change.
• In the past, fatness symbolized food security (had enough) but now the trend toward weight loss has had the opposite effect, and fatening foods prevent the poor from meeting BMI standards
• weight gain became attributed to lack of effort, laziness, and poor education
• consequences lie beyong the control of individuals
• Challenge Two: NCD's
• hear attacks, strolkes, cancers, chronic respiratory illness (asthma and diabetes)
• long duration illnesses often with slow progression of symptoms- raised blood presure, increased blood glucose, elevated lipids (may not even know that you have it)
• suffered MORE in more affluent countries
• due to processed food diet with high levels of salt, sugar and saturated and trans fats -- high meat and dairy and low fruit and vegitables
• Industrial cuisines: processed, packaged and sold in convenience stores and supermarkets, particularly in urban centers
• have the cache of cosmopolitanism
• Resetting the WHO agenda
• to translate the nutritional principles into meaningful dietary advice that crosses cultural boundaries
• How to bridge social inequities that prevent many from accessing healthy foods
• Gastro-politics-- balances the states responsibilities to its citizens againt the interest of multinational food corporations
• From The Ground Up: Grassroots Activism
• Indigenous Rights: Decolonizing Diets
• What appears to have a positive effect is changing the quality of the food rather than the quantity.
• Indigenous people are fighting for a return to their traditional diet in a culturally specific manner
• Angry Farmers: Food Sovereignty and Agroecology
• focus is on protecting local food sources, knowledge, livlihoods, culinary traditions, and the environment.
• An assertion of the control and ownership over territorial production of food, and independent action to bring local food security
• Argued that the UNs policy to "feed the world" acts against local interests-  focus on producing COMMODITY CROPS for sale in the volatile global market.
• Food sovereignty, in contrast, emphisizes control over local, sustainable growing of culturally defined foods to bring food security, rebuild local markets, and only then look to more distant, global markets. 
• The publics expectation of CHEAP FOOD works against the calls for sustainable agroecolgical agenda, encouraging instead, MEGAFARMS to intensify production.
• France (example)
• grassroots activism has made the greatest inroads- fast foods and GMOs have undermined French cuisine and jeopardized the food security of the nation.
• Fast Food: 
• social qualities: fast, individualized, portable, accessible
• fits into the modern work schedule and lifestyle- TIME POVERTY
• Meanings: tasty, quick, predictable
• France: José Bové
• led a battle against McDonalds in France, led the government's fight to get the French gastronomic meal recognized as a tangible piece of cultural heritage by UNESCO
• GMOs and small scale farming:
• GMOs represent agricultural corporations such as MONSANTO, which have monopolized seeds, chemical products, and production- boosting corporate profits and degrading the environment while destroying people's health
• Agroecology: 
• model is diversified - reducing chemical imput, drawing on local knowledge and biodiversity of plants and animal species genetically adapted to the local environment to create healthy , varied foods, and support the livelihoods of local people
• supports small scale, family farming, which is more labor intensive and noe deemed to be capable of creating yields that positively affect food security.
• strategies provide water conservation, reforestation, and agroecological farming- adapting to climate change
• La Vie Campesino (started in Guatemala)
• Resetting The Menu: Food Security and Healthy Food
• WHO Action Plan
• Food Environment- 
• targeting labels
• providing healthier food choices in as many venues as possible
• facilitating cash subsidies
• restricting advertising of processed foods
• Food System-
• strengthening alternative provisioning, and local rural-urban links
• works with the FAO agenda
• supplement traditional subsistence crops with purchased foods made available through (but not exclusively) the sale of an locally grown export crop (like coffee) 
• Consumer Behavior-
• providing education, counseling, and healthcare support
• focus on quality of food not quantity as well as diversity of food available 
• seek help of the media to encourage shift away from industrial cuisine- celebrities
• Cuba and Agroecology
• Cuba has become a leader in agroecology which requires a larger work force and descent wages to attract workers
• long term commitment by the government
• Use traditional and alternative provisioning systems
• farmers markets
• food box distribution
• local cooperatives (communal support)
• enable urban residents to claim vacant land in cities for community gardens
• alleviate income inequality which hampers food security
• Food Security
• aspires toward stable, equitable production, distribution and sustainability-environmentally and socially
• resiliency rests upon diversified, rather than globally uniform, activities to grow food, combined with alternative livelihoods to buy food.
• Food is not only about satisfying hunger but is also about the feeling of emotional and cultural security
• enhance positive social and cultural meanings of healthy food need to be emphasized, local culinary traditions need to be referenced, and opportunities to acquire, cook, and eat healthy food need to be expanded.