Nutrition and Health
- PDF / 92,458 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 576.314 x 719.673 pts Page_size
- 55 Downloads / 206 Views
Nutrition and Health
Nutrition and Health Gun Roos
INTRODUCTION Patterns of diet and activity, and nutritional and health status vary across cultures and historical periods. For example, currently there are populations living as hunter–gatherers and also groups subsisting on diets high in fat and refined carbohydrates. The nutrition and health situations in developing countries have been exemplified by nutrient deficiencies, such as protein-energy malnutrition, iron deficiency anemia, vitamin A deficiency, and iodine deficiency, in addition to periodic famine and high prevalence of infectious diseases. In contrast, over the past 100 years nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some types of cancer) have mainly been a challenge in Western industrialized countries. However, today changes in work patterns, lifestyles, and food systems (e.g., global availability of cheap vegetable oils and fats) are contributing to an increase in non-communicable diseases also in developing countries, particularly countries in rapid economic transition. As a result these countries are facing a growing risk of a double burden: the persisting problem of undernutrition plus the rising prevalence of obesity (Drewnowski & Popkin, 1997; Popkin, 2002). The relationships of food, nutrition, society, and culture are highly relevant for population health and welfare. Food is integrated into all aspects of life, and is, therefore, also studied in a wide range of disciplines. In nutritional sciences food is mainly viewed in terms of its nutrient composition and effects upon the body’s metabolic processes and health status. There has been a special interest in developing methods for measuring nutrient intake and defining essential, adequate, and optimal intakes of nutrients. Anthropological perspectives, which are broad and holistic, tend to look at food and nutrition in populations as complex systems influenced by many factors, including the environment, genetic inheritance, culture, and socioeconomic circumstances. Anthropological research on food and nutrition examines the origin, development, and diversity of the human diet and tries to understand how and what people in different
cultures and contexts eat. Food is often viewed as a system of communication; it conveys meanings and social relations. Cultures distinguish themselves from one another in part through their different eating habits, manners, and conceptions of eating. Class, gender, age, and ethnic distinctions are also manifested through food practices and rules about eating. Food and nutrition within anthropology is a diverse field, which broadly can be divided into two groups based on the main focus: nutritional anthropology and anthropology of food. Nutritional anthropology is a subfield of medical anthropology in which nutritional implications of food intake, food as carrier of nutrients, nutritional status, human growth, and health are the focus. Studies in nutritional anthropology draw on theories and methods from both biologic
Data Loading...
