What is Sustainable Nutrition?
Ensuring that our bodies are well looked after and are receiving enough nutritious and healthy food is extremely important, and from the time that we are toddlers, we are taught that the kind of food that we eat has a large impact on the quality of our lives. As sustainability has been a concept that has developed and grown over the last few years, incorporating healthy and nutritious food with sustainable development is becoming more important than ever, and ensuring that the health and nutrition that we get from the food that is produced today does not impact the ability of future generations to live healthy lives is a vital part of food development and security. Sustainable nutrition involves the idea that the healthy and nutritious food that is produced and grown today should not negatively impact the ability of future generations to be afforded this same type of quality of food. This is not to say that the health of future generations should be considered before our own, but rather this concept is suggesting that there should be a balance within food production and that the needs of the future generations to come should not be compromised through the production methods of today.
Is Sustainable Nutrition Important?
Food is an incredibly important part of our lives, and without good, healthy and nutritious food to sustain our bodies and help us to function, we cannot function properly and lead the lives that we do. Food security is one of the biggest issues of the 21st century, and ensuring that the actions we take are improving the state of the food issues of today is vital to the continuation of the human race. Monitoring the farming practises that we are using and ensuring that the quantity of food that we are producing does not exceed what is sustainable for the planet is a vital part of sustainable nutrition, and it should be a concept that is widely known and understood in every corner of the earth.
What Are The Dimensions of Sustainable Nutrition?
Understanding sustainable nutrition cannot be achieved by looking at the concept through one understanding, and to properly gain insight into the issues of this problem, the four dimensions of sustainable nutrition have been developed. These dimensions aim to fully explain how issues around sustainable nutrition can be solved and what needs to be done to sustainably produce nutritious food.
Health & Nutrition
The health and nutrition dimension of sustainable nutrition looks at ensuring that the right kinds of nutritious foods are delivered to the right people. Looking at the state of inequality in the world it is possible to view how food security is unevenly balanced, with certain groups of people from certain countries given access to the majority of healthy and nutritious food. Sustainable nutrition involves evening this number out across the globe and ensuring that nutritious and healthy food is accessible across the planet! Sustainable nutrition programs focus on balancing out this inequality and reducing the effects of this uneven access, these effects include both obesity and malnutrition.
Environmental
Environmental factors are a large part of sustainable nutrition, and without proper monitoring of how food growth impacts the environment, we will not be able to ensure the sustainability of food security in the future. Monitoring how food systems are impacted by pollution, incorrect and unsustainable farming methods and food wastage will ensure that we are equipped with all the information we need to ensure that the environment is not negatively impacted by the actions we take today.
Economic
The economic pressures of sustainable nutrition can be felt in just about every corner of the earth, and as goods become more and more expensive and more land becomes unable to produce fresh foods, the economic pressures are going to grow. One of the leading factors that cause malnutrition is that food is too expensive and located too far away for many people to access, meaning that they are unable to regularly purchase food and quickly become malnourished. Economic factors play a big role in sustainable nutrition and need to be considered when looking at the development of this concept!
Socio-Cultural
When looking at achieving sustainable crop nutrition and ensuring that every person from around the world has access to good and healthy food, it is important to consider how socio-cultural aspects may differ between different groups of people. What is considered to be healthy and nutritious for one group of people may differ entirely from another and ensuring that these differences are taken into account when monitoring sustainable nutrition is vital.
How Can Sustainable Nutrition Be Achieved?
Sustainable nutrition is achieved by changing the way that food is produced and distributed across the globe. Understanding that food is a necessity for life and trying to achieve goals that centre around food security and the production of nutritious food, all produced in sustainable ways, is vital to the implementation of sustainable nutrition. Understanding which foods provide us with the healthiest lifestyles and creating sustainable methods to ensure that these kinds of foods can be produced for a long time to come is the only way that sustainable nutrition can be achieved.
What are The Things To Consider When Looking To Achieve Sustainable Nutrition?
Through things like sustainable nutrition funds and sustainable nutrition initiatives, it is possible to change the way that food is produced. It is important to consider the importance of food and the role that it plays in our own lives as well as the role that it will play in the lives of future generations, ensuring that good, healthy and nutritious food is produced and distributed throughout the world. Avoiding wasting healthy and nutritious food is an important part of finding sustainable nutrition solutions and helping the world develop better ways to consume, produce and distribute food all over the world.
