The Hard Truths Behind the Complexities of a Healthy Diet (part 2) Fernand Vedrenne - PVNN
May 12, 2013

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We are what we eat, say the people since very many years ago, but it is not very often that we stop to think about the causes that push us to eat what we eat - if at all!

Previously, we have talked about the factors within society which might trigger different health conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and we have seen that there is an association between poverty and physical and economical access to food (food insecurity), and some metabolic diseases.

Food selection is a very complex phenomenon which results from the interaction of many factors such as genetics, food composition, culture, parental influence, family structure, income, food availability, and physical access to selling points among others. While the consumption of nutritious foods might only be seen as an investment in by the privileged sectors of society, low income families choices might be restricted to the cheaper and more energy dense products. Furthermore, if certain conditions like diabetes require patients to shift their energy sources from fats and sugars to whole grains, fruits, and vegetables; we have to face the fact that as long as healthier dietary options cost more, people earning the lowest incomes might not be able to adhere to their new diets, incurring in higher costs when they develop complications.

In addition to all the economic aspects that regulate what we choose at the selling point, there are some genetic and developmental aspects that come to play. Food preference is built up during early childhood. Infants are born with certain food preferences. Usually, children tend to choose their food on the basis of familiarity, but more contemporary research has found that they also have an innate preference for products rich in fats, sodium, and sugars, thus bringing down the theory that wildly, children would only choose nutritious products.

Children can modify their food preferences during their first years of life; one of the most important factors that shape the children’s preference for certain foods is parental influence. Offering children tasty food as a reward for eating a disliked food will only decrease the preference for the disliked product, and increase preference for the reward. This means that offering your child some ice cream if he eats his broccoli or saying “if you don’t eat your broccolis there will be no ice cream for you” will only make your child think of the broccoli as the penitence he needs to go through in order to get the beloved and cherished ice cream (the prize and ultimate goal).

Moreover, restricting access to snacks and other food products will only make the child pay more attention to those products rather than discouraging their consumption – There is nothing more seductive than that which is forbidden.  Another study in Japan found that children who had meals with their families usually eat better and more traditional foods than those who do not. This result underscores the importance of family-togetherness and culture in food selection.  Food has a variety of social functions and the way in which a society advertises products and creates a necessity of belonging is of great importance in food selection.  The historical, geographical and economic contexts of a culture can also shape its food preferences.  Religion plays a very clear role in determining the foods embraced as acceptable by certain members of society.

Studying the different aspects of lifestyle that may have an effect on food selection and dietary composition is of great importance for community health as it brings attention to the fact that many conditions which are related to dietary habits might also have an economic or social cause. The problem of food selection caught the attention of economists when it became evident that the most vulnerable sectors of society were more likely to be affected by obesity and other metabolic diseases.

In my opinion, recognizing that disparities in food selection among the community are a public health threat as well as a social justice problem is paramount in designing new cross-functional strategies aimed at reducing the prevalence of obesity in the world. I believe that most of the health problems that affect modern society can only be solved by offering multidisciplinary solutions. Given that the steps that a society needs to follow in order to be healthy are highly dependent on the socio-cultural context, adapting measures undertaken abroad (in Mexico we tend to use the verb “tropicalize”) can be a huge mistake – Deffinitely the “one size fits all” approach is completely ineffective.  Since our food choices determine our health, it is not possible to overlook the factors that influence our food choices: we are indeed what we eat, but this implies we are also how we live.

Fernand Vedrenne-Gutiérrez was born and raised in Mexico City. Fernand studied Food Science and Technology at Universidad Iberoamericana of the Society of Jesus. He attended Wageningen University in the Netherlands for one semester, and participated in a Global Health seminar at the Imperial College of London, and is looking forward to start his Master’s in Applied Statistics next summer. Fernand has participated in different research projects dealing with a wide variety of topics such as bioethics and Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes at the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and the National Pediatrics Institute (INP). He is interested in the socio-cultural determinants of health, in addition to other topics such as food policy and food preference, and has made contributions to some publications in International Journals such as BMC Medicine. In his free time Fernand is an avid yoga practitioner and amateur piano player who enjoys talking, debating, travelling and meeting new people. His biggest hope is that his work might be useful to society in some way.

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