As the saying goes, “You are what you eat,” and what we eat has a profound impact on our personality, culture, and health. Food and nutrition is the study of understanding these relationships and extends beyond individual health to public health, with community nutrition specifically aimed at improving food culture and nutrition in specific neighborhoods.
There is a saying, ‘You are what you eat’. It means that what you eat can describe the person you are. Food is not just something you eat to fill your stomach. The food you eat says something about you and the culture surrounding it, and your food choices reflect your personality and tastes. What we eat is a subject of in-depth study, not only in the humanities and social sciences, but also in the natural sciences. From the chemistry of how food is preserved and cooked to the biology of how it enters our bodies. Understanding food nutrition is an interdisciplinary field.
Food nutrition is becoming increasingly important. In recent years, there”s been a lot of research on the impact of modern dietary habits on health. It“s becoming clear that what we eat doesn”t just affect weight control and beauty, but also has a significant impact on chronic disease prevention and mental health in the long term. As such, food nutrition plays an important role in public health as well as personal health.
Let’s take a look at community nutrition, a branch of food and nutrition that focuses on hunger and at-risk pregnant women. Community nutrition is a branch of food and nutrition that focuses on improving nutrition to improve the health of local populations, and is a prime example of the convergence of the humanities and social sciences with the natural sciences. It’s not just about developing nutritious food, it’s also about being mindful of the food culture of the communities you’re helping. Unfamiliar ingredients, textures, and flavors can cause people to reject even the most nutritious foods. This is why it’s important to understand the food culture and local tastes of the people in order to help areas that are deficient in certain nutrients.
For example, as part of my food and nutrition class last semester, I worked on a project to improve protein deficiency in Afghanistan, which involved developing food using mezuzu beans (white beans) in collaboration with Dr. Soon-Young Kwon of the Nutrition & Education Institute (NEI), a nonprofit organization working in Afghanistan. While researching to solve the protein deficiency in Afghanistan, Dr. Kwon learned that soybeans served as a good source of protein during the Korean War, which was a similar situation, and why the Korean people did not suffer from protein deficiency. Therefore, the ‘Beans of Hope Project’ is a project to solve protein deficiency by planting soybeans in Afghanistan.
Of the many varieties of beans available in Afghanistan’s soil at the time, we found that mezuzu beans grew well, had a higher protein content (38%) than other beans, and were nutritionally superior, containing omega-3 fatty acids and fiber. We also tested with the local population and found that they preferred mezuzu protein to cow’s milk protein, so it was time to develop recipes for them to cook with it. The first step before cooking was to research Afghanistan’s food culture. We researched what traditional Afghan food is, what the main crops are, and what foods are eaten in large quantities, and then created a dish based on that, and sent the recipe to Afghanistan.
The results were successful. Afghans loved all of the recipes we sent them, and they responded that they wanted to try them. This would not have been possible without the nutritional analysis of mezuzu beans and the culture and sentiment of Afghanistan.
Even if it is not a country in a civil war, community nutrition can be said to be a discipline that aims to help undernourished people around the world, from the hunger in Korea and North Korea to the hunger in the world. Food nutrition is a very important discipline because it deals with the food that people must eat to survive. It”s also a discipline that has many applications in other fields. Examples include cafeteria management and food legislation. In the future, there will be more and more interest in food nutrition, such as the safety of food and interest in anti-cancer and anti-aging foods. I hope that the discipline of food nutrition will be better understood by the public.
The applications of food nutrition are endless. For example, collaboration with food engineering can lead to the development and production of new foods, and collaboration with medicine can lead to the development of diets to prevent certain diseases. In addition, a connection with economics can contribute to the development of the food industry by studying food pricing and consumption patterns. This interdisciplinary approach keeps the field of food nutrition constantly evolving.
In addition, environmental protection and sustainable agriculture are becoming important issues in the future. Food nutrition can play a big role in solving these problems. For example, researchers can pursue sustainable food production by adopting environmentally friendly agricultural techniques, or they can work on building food systems that can respond to climate change. In this way, food nutrition can contribute to the health of the planet, not just human health.
Therefore, food and nutrition is not just a single discipline, but an interdisciplinary field that is constantly evolving and will become increasingly important in the future. This will allow people to lead healthier and happier lives.
