Healthy Eating in Context, University of South Carolina,
March 30, 2012
Roni Neff, PhD MS
Director of Research & Policy, Center for a Livable Future
Assistant Scientist, Environmental Health Sciences
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Rneff@jhsph.edu

A Healthy Environment Is Our
Food Security
• Food systems
• From old food security paradigm to new
• How we get there
• Our roles in the getting there

Johns Hopkins
Center for a Livable Future
Concept Model

• Health-promoting
• Sustainable
• Resilient
• Diverse
• Fair
• Economically balanced
• Transparent
(APHA, APA, ANA, ADA) http://www.planning.org/nationalcenters/health/pdf/Healt hySustainableFoodSystemsPrinciples.pdf

• Inputs, mechanisms, structures for getting food from farm or processing to table and beyond
• Participants, policy, politics
Eggs Processing
Growing
Consumption
Marketing Consumer Access

• < 1/10 Americans meet fruit and vegetable goals in MyPyramid
• 35.7% adults in US obese; 17% children
• Disparities by income, race, ethnicity, geography
Kimmons et al 2009; CDC 2012

• Interconnected
• Nonlinear
• Changes to one component ramify elsewhere
• Ideas about where to intervene
• Adaptive (to a point)
• Modeling

Since WWII our agricultural system has become almost unrecognizable

“How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.”
- Wendell Berry

Nutrition
Risk
Status
Family
Flavor Environment
Health
Convenience Rebellion
Time
Price
Guilt
Culture
Religion
Comfort

“Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.”
--William Ruckelshaus, first EPA administrator

• Food security, nutrition and environment separate
 Food security pressing, affects real people right now
 Nutrition a crisis – individual gluttony escalating
 Environmental concern a luxury
– “save the whales”
 Connections between food choices, envt irrelevant; low food prices the only priority
 Fixing envt might benefit food security, nutrition far in future or somewhere far away
 But: not essential, not here, not now
• Technology will save us

http://cropwatch.unl.edu/archives/2002/crop02-18.htm
; http://rfu3.da.gov.ph/images/drought.jpg
; photo Hamish Wilson from Env Health Perspect 113:8; Aug 2005.

“We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren.
“Now we know that it's us.”
-
Martin Parry, co-chair, Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change

• Global population may exceed 9 billion by 2050
• Need 70% more food! (UN)
• US population may rise by 30% by 2050
• Could lose 10-25% global agricultural capacity by
2080s
• Shortages always hit poor, disenfranchised hardest
Cline 2007; Census 2011; UNFAO

• Food system threats:
 Climate change
 Soil depletion, peak phosphorus
 Water shortages
 Peak oil
 Farmland loss
 “Super-weeds”
 Contaminated water, soil (e.g., methylmercury)
 Population growth
• Food security, environment inextricably linked
 Immediate in some places; not-distant future everywhere
• Technology might help; might backfire. Need all hands on deck

Soil loss is not a problem in agriculture, but the problem of agriculture
–Wes Jackson
• Farming practices affecting soil, soil organic matter
 Compacting, tilling, too-heavy grazing, lack of cover crops, chemical use
• Healthy soils:
 Resilient to drought
 Sequester more carbon
 Reduced erosion
 Healthier plants
• 20-1000 years / inch topsoil
• US losing an inch every 34 years
• Soil contamination

• Fertilizers fueled 20C rises in
food production
• Nitrogen fertilizers
 Crops absorb 1/3 – 1/2 nitrogen applied - runoff
 Energy intensive, greenhouse gases
• Phosphorus : “Gravest natural resource shortage you’ve never heard of”
Elser & White, 2010
• Manure
 130X human waste (US)
 Applied to land, usually untreated
 Often contains: pharmaceuticals, pathogens (incl. antibiotic resistant); dust; arsenic; dioxin, other persistent organics; complex mixtures VOCs
Photo; tilman: srap

Traditional, solar powered agriculture produced more energy than it consumed.
Today: 7-10 calories to produce, process, package every food calorie (>40 for beef)
Today’s food production responsible for:
• 19% US fossil fuel use
Heller & Keolian 2000; Pimentel & Pimentel 2007;

• Oil enabled yield increases of 20 th C
• Food system now fully oil dependent
 Transport, machinery, pesticides, irrigation, mining
• Global oil supply peaks, then declines, extraction increasingly costly.
• “The end of cheap energy will force us to begin redesigning our food economy as a subsystem of the ecosystem.” (Kirschenmann)

THE FUTURE CAN BE BRIGHTER
“The end of cheap energy will force us to begin redesigning our food economy as a subsystem of the ecosystem.” (Kirschenmann)

•
Addressing environment has big picture public health benefits, vice versa
•
Often same eating patterns benefit nutrition, food security, communities & environment
• Eat less [closer to caloric needs]
• Less meat/better meat
• Less processed
• Local (??)
• Note: not always co-benefits

• Each field brings important tools, credibility, audience
• Interdisciplinary efforts even stronger
In addition, public health:
• Addresses public health threats
• Addresses disparities
• Recognizes impact of structural forces
• Works via community partnerships
• Helps make case for action via health framing and co-benefits

New Paradigm, Existing Workload
• Communication – respected source
• Education – co-benefits
• Preparedness
• Interdisciplinary efforts
 e.g., projects to jointly address nutrition & environment
• Partnerships amplify both partners’ efforts
• Monitoring: incorporate relevant indicators
• Research: new questions

Community Garden http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3-Gy0TxZj3U/Sj6XgxcoliI/AAAAAAAAABc/8XPu3ceIiWI/s1600h/ecosophies1.jpg

School System Farm
– education + food production

EBT (SNAP) Access at Farmers Markets

Change Institutional Food Sourcing
Balanced Menus Challenge
-”Less meat, better meat” in hospitals

Urban and
Peri-Urban
Agriculture
Hoophouses

• Cut meat consumption 15%
• International movement
• Cities
• School systems

Aquaponics

Institutionalized Composting

• What must we understand about problems in current system?
• What will it take to address “healthy eating in context”?
 Technical factors
 Motivational factors
• How do various solutions impact health?
Environment?
• How can we do it better?
 Equity, effectiveness, cost effectiveness, sustainability

Roni Neff, PhD MS
Rneff@jhsph.edu
Center for a Livable Future
• Website: http://jhsph.edu/clf
• Blog: http://www.livablefutureblog.com/
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