This chapter explores key ways in which the environment shapes human nutrition and vice versa: how what people eat reflects how they treat and think of the environment. Nutrition has traditionally focused on the availability and interaction of nutrients in food and the influence of nutrients, foods, and diet on human health. In the twenty-first century, calls have become stronger for nutrition science to recognize how ecosystems underpin food systems and food systems are key drivers of environmental degradation. Issues such as energy, climate change, biodiversity, water, land use, and soil all shape food systems, the availability of nutrients, and food production. Ultimately, the future of food systems and nutrition is likely to hinge on whether food production and consumption can become more sustainable. The chapter then considers the role of governments, non-governmental organizations, the food industry, and nutritionists in promoting both healthy and sustainable diets.
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Nutrition, the Environment, and Sustainable Diets
Tim Lang and Pamela Mason
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Introduction
A. Stewart Truswell, Jim Mann, and Leanne Hodson
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the essentials of human nutrition. The science of nutrition deals with all the effects on people of any component found in food. This starts with the physiological and biochemical processes involved in nourishment—how substances in food provide energy or are converted into body tissues and the diseases that result from insufficiency or an excess of essential nutrients (malnutrition). The chapter begins by defining essential nutrients, considering the substances that are needed in the diet for the normal function of the human body. It then assesses whether it is possible to delay or even prevent chronic degenerative diseases by modifying what we usually eat. The chapter provides food composition tables, dietary reference values and guidelines, biochemical tests, and looks at the relationship between food production and delivery and the environment.
