Politics of Food

 Consumers are asking questions about the food production system they’ve rarely asked before. Everybody should understand where their food comes from. That’s good for society, that’s good for public health, that’s good for stewardship of the environment. Current food systems are unsustainable and unhealthy. Malnutrition affects the most vulnerable in society, and it hurts most in the earliest stages of life. Today, more than 800 million people are chronically hungry, about 11 per cent of the global population. Undernutrition is the underlying cause of almost half of all child deaths, and a quarter of living children are stunted due to inadequate nutrition. Micronutrient deficiencies — due to diets lacking in vitamins and minerals, also known as “hidden hunger” — affects 2 billion people.

Another worrying form of malnutrition — obesity — is on the rise. More than 500 million adults are obese as a result of diets containing excess fat, sugars and salt. This exposes people to a greater risk of non-communicable diseases — like heart disease, diabetes and cancer — now the top causes of death in the world.

Consumption of refined sugars, refined fats, oils and red meats such as beef, which have increased as cities and incomes have grown and are expected to do so further in the future, has long been known to be detrimental to health and a contributing factor in type II diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. More people are now aware of the need for a better diet, but major trends have not been reversed. A vegetarian diet reduces the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 41 percent; a diet that includes fish yields a 25 percent decline (No mention was made of the potential impact of a global shift from meat to fish on already overfished waters and on traditional fishing communities whose livelihoods have been significantly affected by existing numbers of industrial fishing trawlers.) and the so-called Mediterranean diet (lots of fruits and vegetables and seafood, with some meat) is associated with a 16 percent drop. Likewise, these diets have been linked to a reduction in your risk for death from heart disease by 20–26 percent, and a 7–13 percent reduction in cancer risk.

In the U.S., farming accounts for 10 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Methane emitted by cattle is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the nitrous oxide that’s generated when chemical fertilizer is applied to soil some 300 times more potent. If current trends continue, with rising affluence around the world leading to more people adopting an American-style diet, G. David Tilman, a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota, estimates that by 2050 we could see an 80 percent increase in annual greenhouse gas emissions related to food production, from 2.27 gigatons to 4.1 gigatons. The Environmental Working Group has charted, bringing a single kilogram of beef to your dinner table generates 27 kilograms of global warming pollution. Compare that with, say, just 1–3 kilograms for an equivalent amount of food such as beans, nuts, and vegetables.

Food production has tripled since 1945, while average food availability per person has risen by only 40 per cent. Our food systems have succeeded in increasing production, however, this has come at a high environmental cost and has not been enough to end hunger.

Put simply: we need to produce the right balance of foods, in sufficient quantity and quality, and that is accessible to all — if we want to lead healthy, productive and sustainable lives. Only socialism can succeed in doing that. There is nowhere else to go except failure. Wake up, people! We can and must rebuild into a renewable and sustainable economy. Shall we really continue a way of life that is deadly to all of us?

 From here