A forum for food law scholars to discuss ideas and to share work, managed by the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law
The National Agricultural Law Center will hold a webinar on Wednesday, April 6, 2022, 12-1pm EDT, 9-10am PT, for law students throughout the United States with interest in pursuing a career in agricultural and food law. See here for details and to register.
The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to world food security and nutrition.
During its 46th plenary session, the Committee on World Food Security requested the HLPE to produce a report on “Reducing inequalities for food security and nutrition”. As part of the report elaboration process, the HLPE is now calling for interested experts to apply to the ad-hoc Project Team for this report.
Experts wishing to apply to this call shall find all the information here.
by Rose Sarner* (Guest Blogger)
“It’s one thing to provide people with food and it’s another to teach food literacy.” According to Fast Company, in 2021, “54 million Americans do not have access to healthy food,” and according to NPR, “80 percent of Americans fail to eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables.”
Healthful food and its many benefits are not an everyday reality for many families in the world. Here in the United States, young kids, teens, and adults have little knowledge about the foods they are putting into their bodies, where the food is coming from, or how different foods affect their overall health. The programs that are in place that are supposed to “educate” Americans are not engaging, clear, or very informative and this failing has contributed to the current health and obesity crisis in the United States. Making health sustainable is a multifaceted issue that has many layers. Many individuals fall short of taking care of their health issues because they do not know how to make a life switch and sustain their progress.
Our schools can play an important role in changing dietary habits by educating students on food literacy. According to The Centers for Disease and Prevention, “US students receive less than 8 hours of required nutrition education each school year, which is far below the 40–50 hours that are needed to affect behavior change.” Additionally, educators are encouraged to teach nutritional education classes at schools; however, given the important role a person’s consumption of healthy foods has in preventing chronic diseases and supporting good health, ideally, educators would provide students with more hours of nutritional instruction. Research has proven a connection between healthy diets and one’s emotional well-being, and how emotions may influence eating habits (The Centers for Disease and Prevention). Due to the large number of required classes in many schools across the country, administrators and teachers should consider ways to integrate nutrition education into their existing curriculums.
Continue reading “The importance of food literacy”
by Minako Kageyama Tanaka
This is the first of three blog posts by Minako Kageyama Tanaka* on food waste in the US, the UK, and Japan.
Many people pay attention to what they eat, but not to what they did not eat. According to an estimate released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of the edible part of food is wasted every year, which amounts to 1.3 billion tons per year. Given that between 720 and 811 million people are facing hunger and 2.37 billion people lack access to sufficient food, the amount of food waste is enormous. Besides, wasting food means wasting resources spent on food production and the supply chain.
To change the global consumption and production patterns in the food industry and its supply chain, the United Nations (UN) has set responsible consumption and production as one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and calls for actions to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses” by 2030. The global society has only eight years left to achieve that goal.
Continue reading “The problem of food waste in the US, the UK, and Japan”
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