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So is personalized nutrition superior to standard dietary advice? Let’s find out…

So is personalized nutrition superior to standard dietary advice? Let’s find out…

With a number of countries having implemented a range of taxes or health levies, what lessons can we learn from these? And what does the best public health nutrition currently tell us about the likely effectiveness of different policies or interventions?

Over the past decade, the increasing uptake and acceptance of the Nova food processing classification system has placed focus on one of the categories in Nova; ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are products created from deconstructed (and recombined) food components, usually with the goal of creating a highly palatable, convenient, and profitable product. This typically means such products are high in nutrients of content (e.g. sugar, sodium, saturated fat, etc.). But in addition, they have other characteristics that may make them detrimental to health, particularly when they replace unprocessed or minimally processed foods in the diet. Dr. Gyorgy Scrinis, is on the podcast to discuss his work in the area.

Climate change has the potential to negatively impact the nutrient value of plants, soil organisms, food stuffs, via a variety of ways. Climate change puts food supplies at risk. Floods, droughts, more intense hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires can drive down crop yields, destroy livestock, and interfere with the transport of food. And rising carbon dioxide levels from human activity can make staple crops like rice and wheat less nutritious.

Clearly the food choices one makes over time directly impacts health. However, choices are not made in a vacuum; that is, they are not always concious decisions made for rational reasons based on free will. Rather, the choices we make about food are shaped by the contexts within which they are made. The term “food environment” is used to describe the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural contexts in which choices are made about acquiring, preparing and consuming food.

Dr. Clare Pettinger is a Registered Dietitian, Public Health Nutritionist and experienced educator. Based at the Universtity of Plymouth, UK, Dr. Pettinger is actively engaged in community-focussed research around food systems, poverty and social justice. She is an enthusiastic ‘sustainability advocate’ involved in promoting environmentally sustainable diets for nutrition professionals and Allied Health Professioinals.

Today’s Topic in Focus: Public Health Policy vs. Individual Responsibility [07:29] In this episode Danny and Alan discuss the evidence for public health nutrition interventions, how health inequalities are driven by socioeconomic factors, and how ideology and simplistic rhetoric about “personal responsibility” can get in the way. References: Rose, 2001 – Sick individuals and sick populations Marmot, 2020 – Society and the slow burn of inequality Mozaffarian et al., 2018 – Role of government policy in nutrition—barriers to and opportunities for healthier eating Wright et al., 2017 – Policy lessons from health taxes: a systematic review of empirical studies Vallgarda, …

Listen on these AppsPodcast TranscriptsGuest InformationProf. Corinna Hawkes Professor Corinna Hawkes has been working for the past 20 years with UN agencies, governments, NGOs and academia at the local, national and international level to support the design of more effective policies throughout the food system to improve diets and prevent malnutrition in all its forms. She is currently Director of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London, UK, a Centre dedicated to shaping a more effective food system through education, research and engagement with the world of food policy. In 2018 she was appointed Vice Chair of …