Sustainable Nutrition in the Community
Affiliation
Research Institute of Biomedical and Health Sciences, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
Corresponding Author
Lluis Serra-Majem, MD, PhD, Professor of Preventive Medicine & Public Health, Director of the Research Institute of Biomedical and Health Sciences, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Barcelona, Spain; Tel: (+34) 928453475; Fax: (+34) 928451416; E-mail: lluis.serra@ulpgc.es
Citation
Serra-Majem, L.L. Sustainable Nutrition in the Community. (2016) J Environ Health Sci 2(5): 1.
Copy rights
© 2016 Serra-Majem, L.L. This is an Open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Keywords
Sustainable nutrition; Sustainable diet; Community
Introduction
Today, the word sustainability is fashionable. Nutrition sustainability refers to the ability of the program or intervention last over time in harmony with the local and global economic, human and environmental resources. We can differentiate sustainability in two major conceptual areas: 1) sustainability of nutrition programs, understood as autonomy, adequacy or continuity, concept commonly applied to community nutrition and cooperation, and 2) sustainability of agricultural, livestock and nutrition policies with the environment.
Food production has different consequences on the geophysical environment, such as degradation of species, toxic emissions, air pollution and water consumption (Machovina, et al., 2015).
Changes in diet, reducing animal products and increasing plant-based foods can not only produce benefits on human health and the global use of land resources, but also can play a decisive role in policies of climate change mitigation (Ridgway, et al., 2015). The Mediterranean diet, understood not only as a set of food, but also as a culture about ways to produce and prepare food, is an example of sustainability, where biodiversity is also a key element (Donini, et al., 2016). Being recognized as Intangible Cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2010, the Mediterranean diet is a cultural heritage that looks to the future (UNESCO, 2010).
Nutrition should consider sustainability as a key element in its planning, and must constitute itself a priority on the agenda for climate change mitigation (Sabaté, et al., 2016).
The papers in the present volume provide a valuable milestone to understand the impacts of diet on health and environment. These papers were the contributions of the experts invited to the I Expert Meeting in Community Nutrition and Sustainability, hold in the island of Gran Canaria the 8th and 9th of April, 2016.
The expert meeting major goals were to define the different aspects that affect the sustainability of the actions of Community Nutrition: environmental, economic, and cultural and health and to study the possibilities of intervention in the specific area of Gran Canaria, analysed as a case study. As a result of all the work done during the meeting we prepared and defined the Gran Canaria Declaration on Nutrition Sustainability with the inclusion of a Decalogue of Good Practices for a Sustainable Diet. We had also edited a video “Decalogue for a Sustainable Nutrition in the Community”; 10 key for a healthier life and world (https://youtu.be/_91m8N85cBk).
References
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- 5. UNESCO. Representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. (2010) (Accessed 31 Aug 2016).