The Security, Quality And Equity Debate On Sustainable Diets: An Ethical Problem

The importance of food security, quality, and equity

The security, quality and equity debate on sustainable diets: an ethical problem to be addressed

The ethical problem which could be derived from the topic of the global production of food: security, quality and equity is that “The  security, quality and equity debate on sustainable diets”. Having food is an ethical decision to maintain a regular diet. The world is depending on food on the regular basis to fulfill their hunger. However, the question arises is the entire world population is  having adequate amount of good quality food? Is the world population  accessible to the food security? (Headey and Ecker 2013).  Is the world is getting enough nutrition for a better life style? Is the poor getting between access to natural resources and technology in terms of the demand for food? These given ethical questions are the basis of the importance of food in today’s world. With the growth of population, there is a dramatic shift from the availability of the food resources to the non-affordability to consume food. The reasons behind such shift could be explained through the causes of depletion of resources, purchasing cost and non equitable distribution of food (Krstallis et al 2012). Thus, it is important to justify the ethical problem, it is quite important to analyze this ethical problem as food is considered to be an important part of the daily life structure. The security, quality and the equity provides a basis of the kind of food that is reaching the hands of people. Security justifies the nutritious food which are good for health, however, how many people are being accessed to the nutritious food? This in turn is also effecting the quality as the food companies are reducing the possible quality of the food by adding chemicals to the food to make it palatable. This is also in turn affecting the justice done to the food system. The ethical problem is important because the food maintains the health of the person, reduces hunger. However, the human beings  are not following proper ethical diet, from the perspective of quality and security. Therefore, this ethical problem of food needs to be addressed as fast as possible.  

In order to understand the mentioned ethical dilemma it is important to demonstrate how the act utilitarianism is helpful in evaluating the ethical problem on food problems and that is “The, security quality and equity debate on sustainable diets”. According to the Act Utilitarianism, an action seems to become morally right when it generates good for the greater number of population depending upon the consequences. The act utilitarianism has the guts to support the analytical process of this ethical problem (Woodward 2013). The problem states that the production of food depends upon the demands of the population. The growing demand of the population needs to meet the production of the food worldwide (Krstallis et al 2012; Kaplan 2012). In this particular aspect, the act utilitarianism states the consequence is being well justified. If there is a high growth of population, then definitely the production of the food needs to be increased which in turn if it becomes possible to deplete the available resources to meet the demand, the action is justified on this ground. The life of the people is more important (Gibson 2016; Thompson 2015; ). Resource depletion is not only happening due to the production of food but also for the purposes of building industries, factories and buildings. To judge act utilitarianism on the ground of the lack of equal share of food with the other parts of the world like Africa or Brazil, the act would define that the justice did not happen because of the government of countries did not take responsibilities to feed the population and also did not take steps to improve the economy which made the population to suffer from malnutrition(Gibson 2016; Thompson 2015). Food security and quality are being compromised because the population wants to just fulfill their stomach by satisfying their taste buds, so on this ground, the demand of the ignorant population is appreciated. Thus, the consequences might happen that the person would suffer from diseases out of having food.  Again the act blames the producers who in order to make the food palatable, mixes certain chemicals which in the end tends to be morally wrong for the consumers who would have the food. Thus, the producers are going against their morals (Gibson 2016; Thompson 2015).

Act Utilitarianism and the ethical problem of food security

In this case, the consequences can be divided into positive versus the negative impacts. The positive consequence while analyzing the ethical act could be said that according to the utilitarian act, there is a rise of demand of food along with the growth of population. On one hand, to look it from the positive perspective, the food companies are profiting more by serving the population, the farmers are working and they are being paid in the return. However the negative sense justifies the fact that this increase in demand is destroying the resources and affecting the environment by trying to meet the satisfaction of the customers. The ethical sense has been overlooked as a result. The government of the developing countries on the one hand, could not meet the satisfaction of the citizens of those countries in terms of food security, quality and equity because the economy is being poorly affected. The result is that the population belonging to the strata of poverty are  not being able to reach the good quality food as a consequence (Popkin et al 2014). However, the government can take steps in order to reach those people by securing economy through integrated nutrition program. It is also stated that more than 15% of the African population suffers from malnutrition and 5% children in Africa are suffering from underweight (Hicks et al 2014). The stability of the malnutrition is being maintained however. This needs to be curbed. Though a positive hope could be expected through the maintaining of ethics. Food security and quality is compromised to satisfy the taste buds for the human beings in this contemporary era.  

A part of population is still suffering from intense obesity and other part of the population is suffering from underweight (Popkin et al 2014). People  mostly would love to fulfill their stomach without reaching the nutritious food. This in turn is affecting their health from the negative sense. However, certain countries due to this adverse consequences are started taking steps. Theresa May, the prime Minister of Britain, have understand the consequences of the country’s population suffering from obesity, in order to curb this, the sugar tax was increased which would reduce the number of people to buy sugar and apply them in food. It also made the producers to cut the percentage of sugar in food (Briggs et al 2013).  Therefore, this describes the positive outcome of the ethical act. The producers are gaining profit by meeting the customer needs, however, ethically they are making it a problem for the customers by reducing the exact amount of nutrients in their food and adding chemicals in order to make the food palatable. Therefore, both the positive and negative consequences are being justified accordingly by taking into account the ethical dilemma in terms of food security (Headey and Ecker 2013).

Positive and negative consequences of food security and quality

However, the ethical problem talks about the lack of security quality and equity of the production of the food. After analyzing the ethical problem with the act, it could be stated that if the negative consequences are encouraged to grow, then the other half of the population will remain destabilized. The net utility will be affected if the population failed to satisfy the health with proper dietary food. It is even happening in different parts of the world. The company or the producers will gain the money utilization but the real net utility will be poorly affected as the health of the population is being compromised more with the profit than with the ethics.

The global production of the food is being affected due to the increase in population and disparity between the income status of people.  In order to understand the importance of food, the framework of food security needs to be explained first. It has been ensured that all citizens should have access to food which is  full of nutrition. However, in reality, this has been taken into account as a matter of debate as it is not possible for all the citizens to have nutritious food (Gibson 2016; Thompson 2015). The governments and other agencies make sure that food must reach to those who want to meet the calorific needs. Nevertheless, the reality is that the population wants the food just to fulfill their hunger irrespective of the fact whether it is meeting the nutritious diet or not. To focus on the nutrition more carefully it is also important to know at what stages such nutrition is necessary and whether it is fulfilling the focus or not. Had it been fulfilled its focus, there would have been no citizens suffering from malnutrition or any other deficient diseases in some parts of the country (Duell 2012). Had it also fulfilled its focus, there would have been no concern of obesity. The quality as well as the quantity of the food is not been taken into consideration properly in order to maintain a balance between the rich and the poor. Quality of the food is being affected due  to the production of the fast food system, where some companies in order to make their profit is not concentrating on the proper making of food (Grier and Lassister 2013). Again the profit surpasses the ethics in this case. The question of equity or fairness comes is the food being equally distributed to the citizens of the world? Are the people of this world getting the provision to take proper nutrients through food? The ethical issue  arises from the production is trying to cop up with the wants of the growing population, which is turn is leading to the depletion of resources as a whole (Duell 2012). The environment as a result is getting affected specially the production of food from the sources of animals which is contributing heavily to the production of the green house gas emissions.

Steps taken to address the ethical problem of food security

To take into account the entire thing, ethical problems regarding the lack of food insecurity especially to the underdeveloped countries, quality of the food is comprised to meet the demand of the population growth and as a result lack of nutrition has become the highest priority along with the environmental degradation. . The equity or justice with both security and quality has become an important topic to discuss as the poverty is increasing and not enough share of food is being properly utilized by the population of the country due to the gap between high income and low income people (Grier and Lassister 2013). Economy plays an important role in describing the role played by the producers to gain profit and provide the customers with rich and palatable food devoid of proper nutrition; it is where the food security is lacking (Atkins and Bowler 2016). The society indeed in order to meet the rat race, maximum family is having no time to cook food in their home. They are more dependent on the fast food resulting to the health degradation for the maximum time. With the change in culture, in order to sustain the growing demand of the competition and the need for globalization, and also in order to sustain a free lifestyle, people are having no time to cook food in their home (Counihan and Esterik 2012). The culture of the culinary world is getting transformed drastically specially in the developed and the developing countries.  

References

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Briggs, A.D., Mytton, O.T., Kehlbacher, A., Tiffin, R., Rayner, M. and Scarborough, P., 2013. Overall and income specific effect on prevalence of overweight and obesity of 20% sugar sweetened drink tax in UK: econometric and comparative risk assessment modelling study. Bmj, 347, p.f6189.

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Gibson, M., 2016. The feeding of nations: redefining food security for the 21st century. CRC Press.

Grier, S.A. and Lassiter, V.C., 2013. Understanding community perspectives: a step towards achieving food marketing equity. In Advances in Communication Research to Reduce Childhood Obesity (pp. 343-366). Springer New York.

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Hicks, R.M., Padayatchi, N., Shah, N.S., Wolf, A., Werner, L., Sunkari, V.B. and O’Donnell, M.R., 2014. Malnutrition associated with unfavorable outcome and death among South African MDR-TB and HIV co-infected children. The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 18(9), pp.1074-1083.

Kaplan, D.M. ed., 2012. The philosophy of food (Vol. 39). Univ of California Press.

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Popkin, B.M., Adair, L.S. and Ng, S.W., 2012. Global nutrition transition and the pandemic of obesity in developing countries. Nutrition reviews, 70(1), pp.3-21.

Thompson, P.B., 2015. From field to fork: Food ethics for everyone. Oxford University Press, USA.

Woodard, C., 2013. The common structure of Kantianism and act-utilitarianism. Utilitas, 25(2), pp.246-265.