Balanced diets – the secret to adequate sustainability for everyone

• Main Author: Augusto Manuel Correia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ALIES - Associação Lusófona para o Desenvolvimento da Investigação e do Ensino das Ciências da Saúde 2016-05-01
• Series: Journal Biomedical and Biopharmaceutical Research (BBR)
• Subjects: Food security; Nutrition; development; new challenges
• Online Access: http://www.alies.pt/BBR%20Editions/Vol-13-1-2016/artigo6.pdf

Until the industrial revolution, agricultural systems were based mainly on the exploitation of natural resources and diets were almost always diversified. With the auspices of modern agriculture and the population growth, the answer to food production concentrated mainly in the selection of some crops that better corresponded to the quantitative needs, observing, in general, a clear loss in the diversity of diets and their nutritional richness. The fact that the strategies used for the development of the more disadvantaged people were for a long time sectorspecific delayed the due importance to the need of having a holistic approach. This approach, for which many authors have received attention, is highlighted in the text. Strategies are sustained that can lead to cross approaches from the different sectors (agriculture, health and education, for example) that can contribute to a more equitable world, based on sustainable agricultural and balanced nutritional systems that correspond to the real needs of the population.