Cuisine. National dieting.

Ø Retell the texts.

Dietary Changes in Rapidly Developing Countries

Diets are changing in the rapidly developing countries of Asia and Latin America. According to Engel’s Law, increased income leads to a reduced proportion of income spent on food but to real increases in food spending. As countries’ incomes increase, their populations’ spending on food increases also, and the composition of that spending changes. Globalization influences dietary changes in the rapidly developing countries by providing convenience foods, various new choices in supermarkets, and new foods available from trade. Urbanization drives demand for convenience food as increases in women’s workforce participation may decrease the time women have available for traditional food preparation practices. Whereas changing diets do not necessarily lead to poor nutritional outcomes, it appears the rapidly developing countries are consuming more calories, more meat, and more fat. Health problems associated with obesity are becoming more common as a result of these changing diets.

Developing world consumers appear to be following Engel’s law by buying more convenient forms of food, spending on more meals away from home, or simply buying more food or more expensive foods. Generally, more affluent consumers will spend, to a point, more on fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy products compared to less affluent consumers.

Engel’s law is one factor in the changing diets of the rapidly developing countries. Globalization and convergence in the food industry also appear to be a factor in dietary decisions. The term convergence implies a dynamic process - movement from different starting levels toward some common outcome.

Fast food outlets and supermarkets have increased their presence and sales in the rapidly developing countries: In China, for example, retail food sales doubled from 1999 to 2005. The growing similarity between rich country food markets and those in rapidly developing countries is referred to as convergence. Multinational corporations involved in the food industry tend to invest in supermarkets, fast food, the snack food industry, and the soft drink industry all over the world.

Urbanization also influences consumers’ food choices. Urban consumers may seek more convenient foods including ready-to-eat foods, partially prepared foods, fast food, and food from restaurants, street food vendors, and carry-outs. They also tend to participate in less physical activity than their rural counterparts. As the likelihood of women in urban areas working outside of the home increases, they may devote less time for traditional food preparation practices. The increased income from women’s participation in the formal workforce

drives both demand for convenience food and provides some of the income to purchase these foods.

In summary, income growth and globalization of the food retail and foodservice industry are giving rise to increasingly similar food consumption patterns across the world. Food consumption patterns of middle- and high-income countries, as indicated by their food spending across different food types over time, are converging. The expansion of Western-style retail and foodservice outlets is modernizing the food marketing sector in developing countries. At the current rate, in about 20 years, food purchases in middle-income countries through Western-style grocery stores will approach 50 percent of the level of the sales in higher income countries. Convergence in the foodservice sector is moving faster, with expenditures in middle-income countries expected to reach 50 percent of the level of high-income countries within a decade. However, the foods U.S. consumers choose to eat away from home, on average, are higher in calories but lower in nutrients than foods eaten at home, these trends have important implications for obesity and health in developing countries.

/“Converging patterns in global food consumption and food delivery systems.”

Amber waves, February 2008. Http://www.ers.usda.gov/amberwaves/ Food: in context. P. 204-207/

Asian Diet

The Asian diet tends to be based on rice as the staple food, and also includes many vegetables. Compared to other world diets, the Asian diet features more fish and seafood, but with lower consumption overall of other sources of animal protein. Japan has avoided many of the diet-related health problems associated with other high-income countries. Many credit this to the Asian diet, and some have outlined an Asian food pyramid as a guide to the Asian diet.

Despite having high incomes in some countries, such as Japan, food insecurity remains common in many parts of Asia, and the majority of the underweight children under five in the world live in South Asia. Vitamin A deficiency is also common in Asia, although scientists have engineered a type of genetically modified rice that contains beta-carotene in an effort to prevent the deficiency.

Diets in middle-income countries in Asia are rapidly changing and becoming more like diets in Europe and the Americas, with reliance on supermarkets and fast food. The relatively high levels of fish and seafood in the Asian diet present some challenges to maintaining fish populations at sea as both incomes and populations continue to increase in the region.

According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2009 data, Japan had the highest life expectancy of any country in the world in 2007: 86 years for women and 79 years for men. Due to high income, high-quality health care, and a healthy diet, the Japanese appear to experience fewer diet-related health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and certain cancers compared to other industrialized countries. Japan consumes only 2,900 calories per capita per day, compared to the average of high-income nations of 3,364 calories per capita per day.

Because the Japanese diet is 80 percent vegetable products and uses fish and seafood for animal protein, these low-fat products help maintain the health of the Japanese population and may explain the difference in this diet with others in high income countries. Other East Asian and South Asian diets have many health benefits similar to the Japanese diet.

The Asian diet pyramid highlights the role of whole grains and vegetables, along with rare consumption of red meat, sweets, poultry, and eggs. The Asian diet was lower in fat content than most other diets.

Despite a diet with many potential health benefits, East and South Asia also have areas with large populations experiencing food insecurity. More than half of the world’s underweight children under the age of five live in South Asia, with 42 percent of those in India and 5 percent each in Bangladesh and Pakistan, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s

(IFPRI) 2010 “Global Hunger Index” report. However, between 1990 and 2000 North Korea was the only Asian country to experience deterioration in its Global Hunger Index score, an indexed measure of food insecurity based on several other measurements. Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, and Timor-Leste had the highest scores in Asia, reflecting high levels of hunger and malnutrition in those countries.

Despite having traditional diets that include a large number of vegetables, Asian diets and persistent poverty have failed to eradicate vitamin A deficiency. Rice lacks vitamin A, and vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness or night blindness in children. Vitamin A deficiency also increases the risk of death from infections as an infant and of contracting a variety of communicable diseases.

For this reason, two scientists, Ingo Potrykus (1933–), a German plant biologist, and Peter Beyer (1952–), a German biologist and biochemist, created “golden rice” by combining traditional breeding methods and genetic modification. Using genes from corn and a variety of other genes, golden rice contains beta-carotene, which the human body converts into vitamin A.

Although golden rice was developed by 2001, it has yet to enter markets, because fear of

genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and slow regulatory processes have not made it commercially available to farmers in Asia.

Diets in Asian countries are rapidly changing due to shifting preferences and wider availability of processed and imported foods. Supermarkets have entered Asian middle-income countries such as China, Thailand, and Indonesia, replacing or competing with ubiquitous street markets and street food vendors. Whereas supermarkets provide convenient access to a wide variety of foods, possibly increasing dietary diversity and improving access to some foods, they also carry a wide array of highly processed, high-calorie foods that may have low nutritional content. Between 1999 and 2005, supermarket sales in China increased 600 percent. Also, Asian countries are experiencing a remarkable expansion of fast food outlets from developed countries: sales of fast food in Indonesia and China doubled between 1999 and 2005. In these rapidly developing countries, health systems have been strained by obesity and other associated health problems.

While being a large consumer of fish and seafood from the oceans, Asia also leads the world in aquaculture, the process of farming fish, crustaceans, and other aquatic plants and animals. Balancing environmental concerns with increasing demand for seafood and fish will remain a challenge for the Asian diet in the twenty-first century. /Food: In Context. P. 53-56/

Ø What do you know about different countries’ dieting?

Дата добавления: 2015-10-13