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Articles

• Toward a new philosophy of preventive nutrition : from a reductionist to a holistic paradigm to improve nutritional recommendations
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The reductionist approach has been predominant to date in human nutrition research and has unraveled some of the fundamental mechanisms at the basis of food nutrients (e.g., those that involve deficiency diseases). In Western countries, along with progress in medicine and pharmacology, the reductionist approach helped to increase life expectancy. However, despite 40 y of research in nutrition, epidemics of obesity and diabetes are growing each year worldwide, both in developed and developing countries, leading to a decrease in healthy life years. Yet, interactions between nutrition-health relations cannot be modeled on the basis of a linear cause-effect relation between 1 food compound and 1 physiologic effect but rather from multicausal nonlinear relations. In other words, explaining the whole from the specific by a bottom-up reductionist approach has its limits. A top-down approach becomes necessary to investigate complex issues through a holistic view before addressing any specific question to explain the whole. However, it appears that both approaches are necessary and mutually reinforcing. In this review, Eastern and Western research perspectives are first presented, laying out bases for what could be the consequences of applying a reductionist versus holistic approach to research in nutrition vis-à-vis public health, environmental sustainability, breeding, biodiversity, food science and processing, and physiology for improving nutritional recommendations. Therefore, research that replaces reductionism with a more holistic approach will reveal global and efficient solutions to the problems encountered from the field to the plate. Preventive human nutrition can no longer be considered as “pharmacology” or foods as “drugs.”

• Malaysian Food Barometer (MFB) : a study of the impact of compressed modernisation on food habits
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The Malaysian society is undergoing rapid modernisation. The
  emerging middle class in Malaysia is influencing the lifestyles and traditional food habits of the main three ethnics (i.e. Malays, Chinese, and Indians). This article studied the impact of compressed modernisation on food in a multicultural context. The Malaysian Food Barometer (MFB), published in the year 2014, focuses on the socio-cultural determinants of food habits in Malaysia.

• 18/ The social stratification of sustainable food practices
  4 July 2022, by Mathilde COUDRAY

  – Carla Altenburger, L’Institut Agro Montpellier, UMR Innovation and UMR IRISSO, Paris, France
  Key points Looking at sustainable food practices, understood here as the purchase of products labelled as “organic” or “fair trade” or that refer to a geographical origin, the French population can be split into consumers and non-consumers of such products. All the consumers surveyed fit one of four typical profiles, the comparison of which shows that sustainable food practices are strongly shaped by (...)

• A conceptual model of the food and nutrition system
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The integrated model developed here included three subsystems (producer, consumer, nutrition) and nine stages (production, processing, distribution, acquisition, preparation, consumption, digestion, transport, metabolism). The integrated model considers the processes and transformations that occur within the system and relationships between the system and other systems in the biophysical and social environments. The integrated conceptual model of the food and nutrition system presents food and nutrition activities as part of a larger context and identifies linkages among the many disciplines that deal with the food and nutrition system.

• Towards a common food policy for the European Union : the policy reform and realignment that is required to build sustainable food systems in Europe
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  This report argues for a Common Food Policy for the European Union : a policy setting a direction of travel for the whole food system, bringing together the various sectoral policies that affect food production, processing, distribution, and consumption, and refocusing all actions on the transition to sustainability. The Common Food Policy vision draws on the collective intelligence of more than 400 farmers, food entrepreneurs, civil society activists, scientists and policymakers consulted through a three-year process of research and deliberation.

• Land statistics. Global, regional and country trends 1990–2018
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The FAOSTAT Land Use statistics and associated land indicators provide information on the full land use matrix by country, including agricultural land (1961–2018) and forest land (1990–2018). These statistics are based on data collected annually from countries via a standard Land Use, Irrigation and Agricultural Practices questionnaire. Forest land statistics in the dataset are collected separately from countries through the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA, 2020). The FAOSTAT Land Cover statistics are conversely produced by FAO, based on its Land Cover Classification System (FAO-LCCS) (De Gregorio, 2015). Information is derived from remote sensing products generated independently by specialized Agencies, currently NASA (MODIS land cover) and the European Copernicus Climate Change service (CCI land cover). Thei brief provides an overview of the main results and changes over time in land use statistics with a focus on agricultural land uses, and with details at global, regional and country level. Additional information is provided on important irrigation and agricultural practices also collected via the above-mentioned FAO questionnaire. It also presents some of the results from the land cover dataset also at global, regional and country level and compares them to land use statistics, thus giving for the first time a joint view of land statistics in FAOSTAT.

• Peruvian cuisine’s slippery road to UNESCO (Raul Matta)
  24 mai 2017, par Clarisse

  An increasing number of strategies of cultural preservation acknowledge local particularities by including them in political and economic programmes. Recent research has demonstrated how governmental and private institutions work to stabilise, promote and manage the particularities of ’national’ foods and cuisines and the image of the countries themselves (Caldwell 2002 ; Karaosmanoglu 2007 ; Hiroko 2008 ; DeSoucey 2010). Food heritage emerges in this context...

• Food choices at the intersections of race, class and gender struggles in post-apartheid South Africa.
  22 décembre 2017, par Roxane

  Yanga Zembe is an associate professor in the Institute for Social Development, at the University of the Western Cape. She is a behavioural social scientist, whose research explores the role of structural factors such as gender and economic inequalities in the production of social and sexual behaviours that lead to negative health outcomes.

• Food Systems Dashboard / Food Systems Types
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The food system is all of the people and activities that play a part in growing, transporting, supplying, and, ultimately, eating food. These processes also involve elements that often go unseen, such as food preferences and resource investments.

  Food systems influence diets by determining what kinds of foods are produced. They also influence what foods people want to eat and are able to access.

  The different parts of the food system include food supply chains, food environments, individual factors, and consumer behavior, as well as external drivers (factors that push or pull at the system). These different parts shape food systems and can lead to both positive and negative outcomes.

• Ultra-processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The relationship between the global food system and the worldwide rapid increase of obesity and related diseases is not yet well understood. A reason is that the full impact of industrialized food processing on dietary patterns, including the environments of eating and drinking, remains overlooked and underestimated. Many forms of food processing are beneficial. But what is identified and defined here as ultra-processing, a type of process that has become increasingly dominant, at first in high-income countries, and now in middle-income countries, creates attractive, hyper-palatable, cheap, ready-to-consume food products that are characteristically energy-dense, fatty, sugary or salty and generally obesogenic. In this study, the scale of change in purchase and sales of ultra-processed products is examined and the context and implications are discussed. Data come from 79 high- and middle-income countries, with special attention to Canada and Brazil. Results show that ultra-processed products dominate the food supplies of high-income countries, and that their consumption is now rapidly increasing in middle-income countries. It is proposed here that the main driving force now shaping the global food system is transnational food manufacturing, retailing and fast food service corporations whose businesses are based on very profitable, heavily promoted ultra-processed products, many in snack form.