FROM:
http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/citywatch-processing-methods-may-move-nutrition-to-food-movement-center-stage/
Processing Methods May Move Nutrition to Food Movement Center Stage
By Wayne Roberts
EXCERPT:
Take a pass on food guides, ingredient pyramids, and with any diet books that feature pro-carb, anti-carb, low-fat or packaged solutions of any sort.
The emphasis of the food movement may be shifting towards nutrition and the fight against heavily processed foods. Go fresh! (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)
The food movement, largely a force of the last 20 years, grew out of efforts to protect local family farms, address issues of hunger and want, promote environmental sustainability, conserve biodiversity, reclaim the spirituality, mindfulness, pleasures, places, cultures and terroir of food, and foster a new crop of food artisans with ambitions to combine community, health and economic benefits.
Nutrition has rarely been front and center of the food movement. Partly that worked to steer clear of turf wars with jurisdictionally jealous dietitians, who tended to see food through an exclusively functional and utilitarian lens – a carrot is a carrot is a carrot and its purpose is to supply Vitamin A and that’s about all we need to know. Partly it worked to build the food movement as a Big Tent movement that stood on its own ground – independent of the divisions identified by vegans, vegetarians, raw foodists, and so on, as well as nutritionists.
That strict boundary between nutrition and food movement concerns may soon end, and that will be a good thing, that may well help the food movement meet its primary task of connecting the dots and people in the whole enchilada known as the food system. It may be time to realize that food system thinking without a nutritional component is a bit like democracy without free speech or human rights.
What caught my attention about the possibility of a new approach to nutrition was an e-mail link that took me to the November issue of the World Nutrition journal , with an editorial proclaiming the “big issue is ultra-processing,” not specific ingredients or nutrients.
A few months away from wrapping up a year-long series by esteemed Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro, the editorial claims that its process-centered approach “implies a revolution in thinking about food, nutrition and health at all levels.”
The revolution seems to be that enjoying simple meals with friends and family will displace preoccupation with specific nutrients as the framework for both personal appreciation and public evaluation of food choices. Occupy the meal table!!!
Among the changes to expect from this new processing-centered thinking will be a dramatic increase in the role of local governments in food and health regulations – an area now monopolized by dysfunctional national and international bodies beyond the reach of the populace and more or less captured by global food processing corporations. By any reasonable standards of a government’s duty of care and protection, the failure to provide legal restrictions around salt levels in processed foods or antibiotics in animal feed speaks to some level of failed states when it comes to food matters.
As processing-based food understandings take hold among food enthusiasts, I predict we’ll see a shift to more City Council support for vending of fruits, vegetables and multicultural dishes at farmers markets and by street vendors, less hounding by local health officials of the likes of street-based food vendors and unpasteurized milk advocates, and perhaps even stepped-up actions to use local zoning and taxing powers to protect people from junk food pushers.
The lengthy series in World Nutrition began a year ago, with an editorial claiming it was “time to start again” with a new nutrition paradigm that highlighted processing methods.
Three kinds of processing are identified, each with specific impacts on health, sustainability and other public benefits...
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