2018 Articles

The Ethics of Food in the Health System Architecture

Fanzo, Jessica C.

Food holds a special place in global societies, and its meaning and value are embedded in our cultures and our economies. We all need food for our survival, health, and overall well-being, which is one reason why it is considered a human right by the United Nations (UN).

The foods we eat that make up our diets come from food systems. These systems comprise all the elements (eg, environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food and to the output of these activities, including socioeconomic and environmental outcomes.

While food systems in some countries are incredibly efficient and offer consumers more diverse foods than ever before, they are also rapidly changing, sometimes for the worse. The diets resulting from inefficient food systems are now one of the major risk factors in the global burden of disease. This is quite apparent when one looks at malnutrition statistics. Approximately 800 million people are undernourished in the world; 155 million of the world’s children under the age of 5 (23%) are stunted or chronically undernourished, and another 2.1 billion people are overweight or obese.