Sustainable Agriculture and Food: Four volume set (Earthscan Reference Collections)

13

Diet and Health: Diseases and Food

Tim Lang and Michael Heasman

Let Reason rule in man, and he dares not trespass against his fellow-creature,

but will do as he would be done unto. For Reason tells him, is thy neighbour

hungry and naked today, do thou feed him and clothe him, it may be thy case

tomorrow, and then he will be ready to help thee.

Gerrard Winstanley, English Leveller, 1609–1676^1

Core Arguments

The Productionist paradigm is critically flawed in respect of human health. Half a
century ago it responded to issues then seen as critical but which now require
radical revision. While successfully raising the caloric value of the world food sup-
ply, it has failed to address the issue of quality, and as a result, there is now a world-
wide legacy of externalized ill health costs. The world’s human health profile is
now very mixed. Within the same populations, in both developed and developing
countries, there exists diet-related disease due both to under- and over-consump-
tion. The pattern of diet that 30 years ago was associated with the affluent West is
increasingly appearing in the developing countries, in a phenomenon known as
the ‘nutrition transition’: while the incidence of certain diet-related diseases has
decreased, such as heart disease in the West, others are increasing, particularly dia-
betes and obesity worldwide, and heart disease in the developing world. Massive
global inequities in income and expectations contribute to this double burden of
disease, and current policies are failing to address it.

Introduction

One of the key Food Wars is over the impact of the modern diet on human health.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, nutrition moved from the sidelines of public

Reprinted from Lang T and Heasman M. 2004. Diet and health: Diseases and food, in Lang T and
Heasman M. Food Wars, Earthscan, London.