Volume 10 - Issue 3

Opinion Biomedical Science and Research Biomedical Science and Research CC by Creative Commons, CC-BY

This Moment of Review of Humanity Reaches Up How Eat and to the Ways of Getting Food?

*Corresponding author: Mabel Angélica Fabro, In Chemistry- Specialist in Quality Management- Institutional Manager, INTI San Juan- Auditor of the INTI Certification Organization, Auditor of the Uruguayan Accreditation Organization- Director of the Postgraduate Career Management Systems for the Agro-Food Industry-ISTIL- R.Gutierrez 11-Lehmann, Pcia de Santa Fe-Argentina, Argentina.

Received: September 15, 2020; Published: September 21, 2020

DOI: 10.34297/AJBSR.2020.10.001513

Opinion

The Covid 19 pandemic has generated a special moment for contemporary humanity. It has placed us in a place of complexity, uncertainty accompanied by a need for abrupt changes in habits, although in principle temporary.

One of these forced changes has been preventive social isolation, a tool used in almost all countries as a means to reduce the escalation of infections. Staying at home without going to work, without attending the usual recreations, without being able to compulsively go to the supermarket, forced us directly or indirectly to rethink our basic needs. In that conscious or unconscious classification, health, shelter from a house and the feeding was presented as the first. Something logical but with the hustle and bustle that the so-called Western way of life poses to us daily, they seem to mix with many other more superfluous and therefore unnecessary or dispensable in the face of calamities.

Food, as I said, appears very first. ¡How we need food! Now we realize that if for some reason this world to which we were used to change like now and we cannot go to buy them around the corner, ¡we can die of starvation! ¡How can man in the 21st century be in this situation? The answer is clear, we are not the producers of our food. The advantage in a catastrophic situation will be of those who will guarantee their minimum portion of food for a certain time. This simple observation, which perhaps seems excessive or exaggerated for the current pandemic, may be true for future catastrophes. Is the current mode of food production and distribution a point of weakness for humanity? We can say that it is if we take into account the enormous difference in access to food in different countries and within each country. The problem of hunger in the present world prior to the pandemic, was already of enormous magnitude and contained complex borders, with implications in the moral, political, social and economic aspects. But in a pandemic, access to food is once again put into the lens, perhaps also from other perspectives.

The multiple aspects that have led humanity to this mode of access to food are mixed, varied, vast and unapproachable. The current text aims to be a set of triggers for questions, questions, doubts that open up in this current context as a very rich universe of exploration. The universe of the human being, its socialenvironmental mode and its diet. It is not a deep exploration, much less complete. I intend to point out in some way an unfinished series of doubts.

Human society has evolved through its long history in broad aspects. If we focus on food and the means to satisfy it , the steps have been many. In general correlated and with a certain basic orientation. That orientation was to find first and secure later. Obtaining security to find food was an engine that led to the first practices. Initially it was intended to have enough quantity for all members on the day. That was primordial. Then they would think of a sufficient amount for a certain term in the future. Surely, like the other animal communities in those beginnings, there could have been some rules of order in access to food, but the whole group always ended up eating. Later, with the advancement of humanity and increasingly complex societies, the enjoyment of food, special preparations, and banquets appeared. Substantive social differences also appeared almost continuously and with them the differences in the modes, types and fundamentally amount of food. The banquet was no longer for the whole group. Then also began eating habits due to the rewards that the repetition of the behavior has given the subject. And sugars, refined flours and sedentary lifestyle and everything harmful to health.

We know that food has contributed to the structure of the genomic structure of the human species, especially in the Paleolithic period. But from that remote time until now there have been no new modifications in the genome and strong changes in the diet. Fundamentally in the last centuries, generating then what is called the evolutionary discordance of the diet. In the last decades, increasingly strong movements have begun in relation to demanding different requirements in food. Safety, quality, origin, conditions of origin, etc. Embedded in certifications. A world of certifications. Then also the vegetarian movements and more here vegan. Do not kill animals for food.

And hunger? Hunger has been an inseparable companion of man throughout history. Disasters such as major droughts have caused major famines and even demographic changes. Today there is chronic hunger in certain populations of the world. Today there is great disparity, perhaps more than ever in the distribution of food. Food is produced sometimes close, sometimes far from where it is consumed. There is hunger very, very close to where millions of foods are produced, but those foods are going to other places. What is the distribution chain like? Who are the owners of the food? Why is approximately 30% of what is produced wasted? How many weaknesses !!!

But there is also the human right to food. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights results from an agreement between nations based on the recognition of the dignity and inherent equality of all people. The right to food is incorporated as a human right in article 25 of said declaration. But who guarantees it? If today it we can see evidence that it is not fulfilled for all. Many questions, doubts, thought triggers and rethinking arise in relation to all this and I want to present them.

Where is humanity going with its individual and collective habits in relation to food? How will social contexts and changes relate to food? How can we move forward as a more equitable and less vulnerable civilization in this regard? Will we go back to producing our own food? Will the terrible inequalities disappear in this way? Will there be land or soil for each of us? Will there be other modes of production such as hydroponics? Will they be individual? Collectives?

What will we eat? Modifying eating habits turns out to be a complex process, how will these changes be achieved? Will new habits help reduce the gap between the genome and our diet? Today can weather disasters or, for example, great earthquakes produce famines? Or are political decisions its causes? Can a pandemic cause famine in humanity?

Will the slowdown in world population growth help sort out our food distribution imbalances?

Can states and their world organizations improve these imbalances?

The new generations that ask that the food is not of animal origin, that raise their voice for animal abuse, will they ask for new ways to produce and ask for a distribution of food to the entire litter?

Can society from below helped by triggering events like this pandemic promote these changes? This is my last and main concept to situate here: positively society from its children, young people can rethink the way of obtaining food and its distribution. And finally the challenge can we all eat again?

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