Re-emphasizing food as basic medicine of public health to reclaim hunger in health discourse

Abstract

Food is crucial to ensuring human well being. However, prevalence of

widespread hunger and malnutrition in the world, especially in times when

mankind has the capability to feed all the people in the world to enable them to

have healthy and productive lives, obliges us to reiterate the public health

importance of adequate food for ensuring human well-being.

Health is perhaps the best marker of human well-being, and improved health

inter-alia is reflected in longevity of human life – put simply, the ability of man

to live. Talking of human health, the spectacular technological achievements of

modern medical science tend to dwarf every other determinant of health in

popular perception. This has tended to undermine the primary importance of

food strategies in ensuring human well being. Beginning with McKewon’s thesis

on the modern rise of population in England and Whales, we rely on other

evidence available in literature to establish the primacy of food, over and above

medical technologies, in ensuring health and thereby well being of human race.

In order to further highlight the importance of ‘hunger’ in public debate, the

paper examines the shift from ‘Hunger’ to more scientified terminology of

‘Nutrition’ as a strategy by the vested interests to invisibalise the larger

question of ‘Hunger.’ Conclusions are accordingly drawn at the end.