Editorial Introduction to Volume III 9Islanders and Iceland, native Eskimos (as they were then known), and the people
of rural China (using F. H. King’s book).
Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina made a significant contribu-
tion to our understanding of changing diets by coining the phrase ‘the nutrition
transition’. Human history is, of course, characterized by many changes in diets
and nutritional status, but the pace of change has considerably quickened in recent
decades. The most recent nutrition transition has created an age of degenerative
diseases and conditions that are avoidable, but only if there are rapid changes in
both diet and levels of physical activity. Popkin sets out five periods in human
populations: the age of collecting food, the age of famine, the age of receding fam-
ine, the age of degenerative diseases and the age of behavioural change. The last is
yet to occur in industrialized countries. Across all industrialized countries, and
increasingly in wealthier populations in developing countries, people have adopted
diets containing ‘superior grains’ (rice or wheat instead of maize or millet), more
milled and polished grains, food higher in fats, more animal products, more sugar
and more food either prepared away from the home or processed.
The third article is drawn from Tim Lang and Michael Heasman’s book Food
Wars, and focuses on diet and health, and what has occurred during the recent
experiment with modern agricultural systems that has focused primarily on increas-
ing food production without concern for what has been lost. Modern agriculture
has produced a commodity-based food system, and the diets of the majority of
people in industrialized countries have shifted enormously. Food-related ill health
now exceeds the costs of smoking in Europe and North America, with obesity, type
II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, diet-related cancers and osteoporosis on the
increase. There are now some 1.7 billion people worldwide who are overweight –
in a world where 800 million people remain hungry on a daily basis. Lang and
Heasman set out details of this nutrition transition, and indicate precisely how diet
composition has changed. We are now in a world where there are large numbers of
underfed, overfed and badly fed, and this of course raises significant questions for
policy makers who are largely yet to grasp the need for fundamental change.
Marion Nestle’s book, Food Politics, is subtitled ‘how the food industry influ-
ences nutrition and health’, and this opening chapter indicates the extent to which
diets and food choices are cleverly shaped by corporate interests, and how these of
course affect people’s health. The food industry has given many people in the
world a plentiful food supply that is both varied and inexpensive, as well as devoid
of dependence on geography and season. In the US, food supply is so abundant
that it contains enough food to feed everyone in the country nearly twice over. To
satisfy shareholders, food companies must convince people to eat more of their
own products instead of those of competitors, and this requires considerable invest-
ment in advertising and public relations that is not only targeted at consumers, but
at government officials, nutrition professionals and the media. Nestle shows how
food companies use political processes (entirely conventional and nearly always
legal) to obtain the support they need for the sale of their products. This opening
chapter reviews what constitutes a healthy diet, shows why diet does matter and