Tuesday afternoon in Canyelles, Barcelona. Joan goes down to do the shopping at Dia, and will continue in the butcher shop and greengrocers. He buys enough food to cook for the next few hours and prepare five different dishes for his family of four. The two-kilo box of strawberries was very cheap, 5 euros. The idea is to have dishes made for the week and have fruit and salad. In total he spends 73 euros, it seems much more expensive than months ago. Except for the butcher, all the people who serve him are immigrants.
Anne, lives in Fridrichshain, Berlin, that afternoon some friends from Madrid come to visit, they take a walk in the park and go down to the new pizzeria that they love, Lola Pizzaiola. They are three adults, two teenagers and two girls. They have fantastic slices of pizza, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers and four soft drinks; 82 euro. The pizzeria workers are Italian and Ukrainian.
Jay studies at the City University of New York and lives in Queens. Five classmates from the master have stayed to eat and work on a subject project. They order Thai food from a nearby cheap restaurant that they love and it’s delivered by an Uber Eats delivery person. In total they pay 15 dollars each. The delivery man was a Latino guy.
This could be any day in three cities around the world. Food is understood today as a very complex system in which research is contributing knowledge and questions.
Food systems
Expert groups assembled by FAO defined food systems as all elements (environment, population, processes, infrastructure and institutions) and activities related to production, processing and packaging, distribution, preparation and consumption, including impacts on health, environmental and socioeconomic of these systems.
Food systems currently account for more than 40% of the production of greenhouse gases on the planet. And at the same time they give work to millions of people. These facts force us to rethink our current food systems and, therefore, our diets. Food systems must not only respond to the health of our populations, but also respond to the sustainability of the planet and decent employment.
Food systems, health and sustainability
In the area of Nutritional Epidemiology we have spent more than half a century studying how the quality of the diet is related to different diseases. The most important diseases related to diet, because they are suffered by a huge part of the population throughout the world, are cardiovascular diseases and many types of cancer.
On the other hand, the study of the environmental effects of food systems is relatively recent. We now know that the food system is responsible for 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Food systems use 70% of fresh water while polluting water. 40% of the planet’s habitable land is used to grow food or feed animals for human consumption. More than 70% of global deforestation is related to the food system.
An international study, published in Nature in 2018, analyzed different options to reduce environmental effects, including changes in the diet towards healthier patterns, based on foods of plant origin (fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes) and drastically reducing food waste. . The study concluded that the synergistic combination of the different options is the only way to mitigate the environmental effects of food systems.
Food systems and decent work
Finally, it is key to recognize decent work as a fundamental part of human development, as the sustainable development goals do, specifically goal 8. Food systems employ hundreds of millions of people around the planet in their different tasks. All the people who work in the different steps of the food system deserve a job that allows them and their families to have a dignified life.
People who work in the fields and livestock, in packaging and processing plants, in supermarkets and stores, in different bars and restaurants and food delivery workers, today have very high percentages of precarious contracts that do not ensure an acceptable standard of living. In developed countries, most of these people working in the different activities of the food system are immigrants.
What do we do from research in urban food systems?
From urban health research, interesting projects and studies are being carried out that, from the local perspective of a city, provide knowledge and recommendations to improve urban food systems.
For example, the European project School Food For Change (SF4C) is based on the fact that children and young people spend most of their days in educational centers, which makes them not only a place to learn, but also to eat. and socialize. The SF4C project combines these elements to have a long-term positive impact on school canteens in Europe. This project includes multiple actors; chefs, caterers and public buyers at city level and aims to create a real domino effect in the 12 participating European countries.
Another very interesting example was carried out in Mexico City, where researchers from the Urban Health in Latin America (SALURBAL) project showed a rapid and substantial change in the city’s food environment from 2010 to 2020, where the number of convenience stores, supermarkets, specialized food stores, greengrocers increased significantly in the most deprived areas, compared to the less deprived ones.
What is being done in different cities in this regard?
Concern for food in cities is not new. Yes, it is the fact that there are people working in the different local administrations with the specific tasks of protecting the good nutrition of the population. In 2014, an international protocol called the Milan Pact for urban food policy was created in Milan. In 2015, 100 cities adhered to this pact and currently there are 250 that include more than half of the planet’s population.
In Spain there are 16 adherent cities and working in this area. The city of Barcelona, World Capital of Sustainable Food 2021, has just presented its 2030 Healthy and Sustainable Food Strategy with the aim that the population of Barcelona can have good food for health, for workers and for the planet.
By 2050, two thirds of the planet, of the 8 billion we have reached, will live in cities. And all people want to achieve the highest level of health and well-being. To do this we will need to understand, change and improve many pieces of our food systems. The box of strawberries that Joan bought, Anne’s pizzas or Jay’s Thai food must not only be part of healthy diets, but must also be sustainable in the way they are produced and distributed, and all the people involved in making these foods reach our tables must have a decent job. Complex, planetary and urgent tasks that undoubtedly deserve our attention.
Health goes through neighborhoods is a section that explains in a simple and friendly tone the concepts and advances in research in Urban Health, a necessarily interdisciplinary area of Public Health. Urban Health research aims to improve our cities to improve the health of the millions of people who inhabit the complex and unequal cities that characterize life on our planet today.
