Sustainable Nutrition
Sustainable Nutrition
The concept of sustainable power contemplates the consumption of food nutritionally healthy, with a low carbon footprint, in terms of land use and water resources used, with low carbon and nitrogen, attentive to the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystems, rich in local and traditional foods, fair and accessible to all.
This concept can not therefore matter low mileage of food products, from food seasonality and the principle of food sovereignty.
contrary, in fact, the remarkable “progress” of agriculture in the last thirty years, it is clear that current food systems continue to be unsustainable. While, in fact, in the world there is still a billion people going hungry, many more people are overweight or obese, with a total of more than two billion total poorly nourished people. The systems of production and current food consumption should, therefore, undergo some radical changes, focusing on the increase in demand and supply of healthy foods, environmentally, just elaborated from an industrial point of view and cultivated in the traditional areas of origin, in respecting biodiversity and the resources available.
The notion of “sustainable diet” was unthinkable just 300 years ago, when it obtained the majority of the foods from their ecosystems and knowledge and farming practices ensured the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity is both an agricultural and wildlife.
Agriculture and diets have changed dramatically in recent decades, to the point that now the concept of “sustainable diet” seems a novelty. In the early eighties, with “sustainable diet” is intended to dietary recommendations to make the environment and healthier people. Subsequently, modern agriculture and globalization have reduced the attention towards sustainability for the intensification and industrialization of farming systems.
The result was a dramatic increase in the global production of food, without bringing improvements globally in nutrition. The puzzling result today is that the number of undernourished people has reached more than a billion and yet obesity and chronic diseases associated with it, have reached similar figures. If you associate this data to the alarming rate at which ecosystems are deteriorating and biodiversity is being lost, a review of diets is essential.
For thus overcome this social and ecological disaster, it is clear review, indeed affirm anew the concept of sustainable power, as a new frontier and basic principle on which to restructure and review all related policies: from the agricultural to agro-industrial ones up to those food and health.
The direction taken by modern agricultural policies and market is indeed in a different direction and, before the process becomes irreversible, it is necessary for local communities, even before they become aware of the central policies and determination.
Guido Bissanti