Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:05:39.449Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Integrating nutrition with ecology: balancing the health of humans and biosphere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2007

Anthony J McMichael
Anthony J McMichael*
Affiliation:
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Email [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Objective

To show that current rates of global population growth, production and consumption of food, and use of living and physical resources, are evidently not sustainable. To consider ways in which nutrition and allied sciences can respond to this great challenge of the twenty-first century.

Method

Past, current and future projected trends in production and consumption patterns are examined. These show that overall present and projected patterns cannot be sustained; and also show increasing unacceptable inequity between and within rich and poor regions and countries.

Discussion

Nutrition science classically focuses on nutrients in relation to human physiology, metabolism, growth, health and disease. The social and environmental conditions of the modern, interconnected, market-oriented world, and the consequences for food production and consumption, are extending the research and policy agenda with which nutrition science must now urgently engage. Historically, much attention has been paid to eliminating nutritional deficiency states, and this remains an important task. In modern urban populations ‘malnutrition’ encompasses new forms of dietary imbalance, especially excesses of certain nutrients. These contribute to various non-communicable diseases and, particularly, to overweight/obesity and its attendant metabolic derangements and disease risks. As a mass phenomenon the current surge in obesity has no historical precedent. The escalating impact of humankind on the natural environment, with its ramifications for present and future food production, is also unprecedented.

Conclusion

The essential challenge for nutrition science is to develop new understanding and strategies to enable a balance between promoting, equitably, the health of humans while sustaining the long-term health of the biosphere. Extension of nutrition science and food policy to meet those goals will be aided by understanding better how dietary conditions shaped the biological evolution of humankind. The fundamental long-term task is to integrate human health with the health of the biosphere.

Keywords

EvolutionEcologyFood productionSustainabilityBiosphere
Type
Research Article
Information
Public Health Nutrition , Volume 8 , Issue 6a , September 2005 , pp. 706 - 715
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

References

1Lang, T, Heasman, M. Food Wars. The Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets. London: Earthscan, 2004.Google Scholar
2McMichael, AJ. Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures. Cambridge: University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3Butler, CD. Inequality, global change and the sustainability of civilisation. Global Change and Human Health 2000; 1:(2) 156–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4Sen, A. Poverty and Famines. An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.Google Scholar
5Cohen, M, Armelagos, G. Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. London: Academic Press, 1984.Google Scholar
6Wheeler, P, Aiello, L. The expensive tissue hypothesis. Current Anthropology 1995; 36: 199–222Google Scholar
7Flannery, T. The Future Eaters. Chatswood, NSW: Reed Books, 1994.Google Scholar
8Diamond, J. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. London: Allen Lane, 2005.Google Scholar
9Andre, C, Platteau, JP. Land relations under unbearable stress: Rwanda caught in the Malthusian trap. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 1998; 34: 1–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
10McMichael, A Diabetes, ancestral diets and dairy foods: an evolutionary perspective on population differences in susceptibility to diabetes. In: Macbeth, H, Shetty, P, eds. Ethnicity and Health. London: Taylor & Francis, 2001; 133–46.Google Scholar
11Cavalli-Sforza, I, Menozzi, P, Piazza, A. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
12Eaton, S, Konner, M. Paleolithic nutrition. A consideration of its nature and current implications. New England Journal of Medicine 1985; 312: 283–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
13Wickes, I. A history of infant feeding. Part 1. Primitive peoples: ancient works; renaissance writers. Archives of Disease in Childhood 1953; 28: 151–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14Eaton, S, Pike, M, Short, R, Lee, NC, Trussell, J, Hatcher, RA et al. Women's reproductive cancers in evolutionary context. Quarterly Review of Biology 1994; 69: 353–67CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
15Strassman, B, Dunbar, R. Human evolution and disease: putting the Stone Age in perspective. In: Stearns, S, ed. Evolution in Health and Disease. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; 91–101.Google Scholar
16Wood, J, Milner, G, Harpending, H, Weiss, K. The osteological paradox: problems of inferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 1992; 33: 343–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17Powles, J, Day, N, Sanz, M, Bingham, S. Protective foods in winter and spring: a key to low vascular mortality? [letter]. Lancet 1996; 348: 898–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18Programme UNE. Global Environment Outlook (3). Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations, 2002.Google Scholar
19WEHAB. A Framework for Action on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management: The WEHAB Working Group, 2002.Google Scholar
20Tilman, D, Fargione, J, Wolff, B, D'Antonio, C, Dobson, A, Howarth, R, et al. Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change. Science 2001; 292: 281–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
21Peng, S, Huang, J, Sheehy, JE, Laza, RC, Visperas, RM, Zhong, X, et al. Rice yields decline with higher night temperature from global warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 2004; 101: 9971–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
22Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Rome: FAO, 2004.Google Scholar
23Wang, W, Taniguchi, K, eds. Nutrition Intake and Economic Growth. Studies on the Cost of Hunger. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2003.Google Scholar
24Greenland, D, Gregory, PJ, Nye, PH. Land resources and constraints to crop production. In: Riley, R, ed. Feeding a World Population of more than Eight Million. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
25Trewavas, A. Malthus foiled again and again. Nature 2002; 418: 668–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26Criss, RE, Davisson, ML. Fertilizers, water quality, and human health. Environmental Health Perspectives 2004; 112: A536.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
27Tilman, D, Cassman, KG, Matson, PA, Naylor, R, Polasky, S. Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices. Nature 2002; 418: 671–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
28Fields, S. Global nitrogen: cycling out of control. Environmental Health Perspectives 2004; 112: A556–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
29Trewavas, A. The population/biodiversity paradox. Agricultural efficiency to save wilderness. Plant Physiology 2001; 125: 174–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
30Green, RE, Cornell, SJ, Scharlemann, JP, Balmford, A. Farming and the fate of wild nature. Science 2005; 307: 550–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
31McMichael, A. Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species. Cambridge: University Press, 1993; 234.Google Scholar