Human rights: Food for a poor motivation thought  ‘The right to nutrition’

Human Rights Reader 556

[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about how to actually realize the right to food and about the disaster of the global dietary transition to ultra-processed foods with its implications for human rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].

1. In an uncharacteristic way, let me, this time, start off with some of my related iron laws:

• If you eat too much, it is your problem; if you eat too little it is everybody’s problem. (Gro Harlem Brundtland)
• A child gaining weight cannot be very sick. A child not gaining weight cannot be very well. (Charles Janeway)
• Come to think of it, humans are the only animals with rampant levels of obesity. (M. J. Gibney)
• Stunted children have been called Bonsai children. (The photos of these starving children are used by charity groups in their fundraising. Some have called this hunger pornography).
• The nutrition situation is so dire that there seem to be quotas for death by starvation. (E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime)
• Therefore, if war is too important to be left to the generals, then nutrition is too important to be left to director generals.
• [And indirectly related: Note that cost-benefit analyses are used in the food and nutrition domain, but do not work for breastfeeding. (Penny van Esterik)].

Recognizing the right to food and nutrition is not the same as realizing it! (Olivier de Schutter)

-Actually, for any violated human right, remember: Reparations must take the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction of guarantees of non-repetition. (CESR)

2. The right to food and nutrition (RTF) places responsibilities on states such as participatory governance and a focus on the most marginalized, as well as the rule of law, transparency and accountability ----all well-defined government obligations. The RTF is not just an outcome, but a set of processes and government obligations rooted in specific understandings of food system governance and of the respect of dignity and diversity. It is ad-hoc legislation and political recognition of the RTF that ultimately allows for a more systematic and detailed application of the RTF. The RTF having an explicit mention in the constitution only is clearly not enough.

3. Since claim holders are the most affected, the weight of their voices must be superior to those of corporations or of any other third party. It is rights-based approaches that elevate the voices of these nutritionally impacted communities. Participatory processes ensure that policymaking responds directly to lived experiences of claim holders and give respect to their human dignity; it is thus direct democracy that is at the heart here. The risk of under-inclusion is always looming. (O. de Schutter)

It is those rendered poor that allow ‘the rich’ to be well fed

4. Food security has traditionally had four dimensions: availability, access, utilization and stability. But from the RTF perspective the four main components are somewhat different: availability and access are equal to the above, but the third dimension is adequacy (different from utilization as it includes social, economic and cultural, as well as climate, and ecological considerations) (CESR and Nadia Lambek). The fourth dimension is sustainability (differs from stability above since it includes present and future generations). (O. de Schutter)

5. From the sustainability perspective, then, economic growth per-se does not improve the food security of those rendered poor. (V. Chin) Low-level laborers in farms, fisheries and factories contribute a great deal to economic growth, but get little in return. So, in short, hunger arises when people do not have adequate control over their own life circumstances. (George Kent)

6. Even with more than 1/3 of mankind suffering from food shortages, all the way down to starvation level, it is profit and purchasing power, not need, that determines who gets the ‘small offerings’. The side of the world rendered poor has no say in this state of affairs and, furthermore, is forced to take the brunt of the continually rising world market prices.

7. Considering all this, I feel we are getting fixated on eliciting political responses to strictly resolve food insecurity. Should we not be eliciting political responses to eliminate the poverty that brings about food insecurity?

Good nutrition for all is no longer (was it ever?) the dominant motivation that drives food production in the world

8. Producers attention has shifted to the pursuit of wealth. With the advent of modernity, agriculture and nutrition were separated; now production is for profit. Farmers scan the horizons for the highest bidder. The shift towards productive resources is increasingly used to feed distant others rather than to meet the nutritional needs of local people. …And the RTF consequences are being despondently ignored.

Therefore, in come agroecology and food sovereignty

-Subsistence farmers wisely minimize risk rather than maximize production.

9. The central idea of agroecology is that agroecosystems ought to mimic the biodiversity levels and functioning of natural ecosystems. (Michel Pimbert) Agroecology has its roots in the collective local knowledge and is thus explicitly linked to food sovereignty* and to the RTF. (SID) It further seeks to regenerate economic, social and ecological diversity. Sustainable diets are defined as “diets with low environmental impacts that contribute to food and nutrition security and a healthy life for present and future generations”. (Barbara Burlingame). Agroecology pays attention to the intersection between food system actors and opposes the concentration of power in the agribusiness sector. It is thus about building alternative food networks that re-localize production and consumption through food systems functioning in the image of nature and that abhor pure technical fixes. (But I note: Diversity on the farm does not automatically lead to diversity on the plate…).

*: Food sovereignty is defined as “the right of the peoples to nutritious and culturally acceptable, accessible, foods produced in a sustainably ecological manner and their right to decide on their own productive food system”.

10. Agroecology is thus understood as the practice of working with nature and farming sustainably including people and their social organizations as part of the ecology. But still too many farms, fisheries and food factories operate in ways that exploit their workers, their environment and their customers. Large farms are unsustainable; they externalize many of their social and environmental costs. (V. Chin)

Increasing uniformity in the ‘global dietary transition’ is creating havoc

11. The aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods for children and for adults is reinforcing health inequalities. Upstream causal factors are not controlled by consumers, especially children, so obesity is not being the result of voluntary choices. (WHO) Digital marketing methods are even more of a concern as they target children with greater precision. (K.C. Montgomery) Many children watch mixed-audience programs, so prohibiting advertising in children’s programs only is not enough. What counts is the actual exposure of children to unhealthy food marketing, not the classification of a program on the media! Advertising in general manipulates consumer behavior through implicit persuasion and this explains why cognitive defense mechanisms do not protect children. (A. Nairn)

12. Furthermore, there is still limited evidence to indicate that food labeling has influenced consumer comprehension and food-purchasing decisions in a big way. Some degree of nutrition literacy is required. (J. Mandle). But this is not the most worrisome. Worrisome is that protective food labeling concentrates on nutrients** allowing industry to endlessly reformulate to avoid a ‘bad’ label --but the products continue to be ultra-processed(!) reinforcing health inequalities since those rendered poor make their purchases in ‘food swamps’, i.e., areas where unhealthy junk foods are more readily (and cheaply) available than healthy foods.

**: A focus on single nutrients has been paving the way for TNCs to use ‘nutritional positioning’ to bolster their sales, their power and their influence. (J. Clapp)

13. Strengthening the capacity of claim holder consumers to understand and realize their rights, as well as those of duty bearers in the bureaucracy to meet their legal obligations is a must. (Convention of the Rights of the Child) In the HR-based approach one regularly monitors the state’s commitments and deeds. States that regulate the unhealthy food marketing too narrowly, only result in marketing strategies of Big Food to promptly shift to ‘accommodate’ their tactics. The little is, therefore, the enemy of the necessary.

We need to get all nutrition practitioners on the same page!

14. The side on which we ought to be in this struggle is clear. Putting our energies on improving the provision of food and nutrition services for those rendered poor from the top down is not an intervention that promotes people’s rights per-se (be it in the micro-nutrient, protein-energy malnutrition or obesity realms!). Poverty and malnutrition being forced on individuals and families who do not have any other choice is unequivocally linked to injustice --and potentially to rebellion. It represents a-denial-of-human-rights-on-a massive-scale. Should this fact not make a difference in (y)our everyday work?

15. When people go hungry, we can be sure that others are controlling the resources around them. People need power, individually and in community with others to shape their own lives and live in dignity. (G. Kent)

Never forget: The science of nutrition is the science of the nutrition problems in society! (Urban Jonsson)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

Your comments are welcome at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com

Postscript/Marginalia

-I note: Increases in GDP occur several years before nutrition indicators begin to show clear signs of improvement; they do not improve in tandem with economic indicators. (Heather Danton) So, while much of the current evidence of the negative impact of globalization (and now the COVID pandemic) on nutrition is not (yet) fully measured, its consistent and pervasive strangling effect on malnutrition ought to make us take a closer look. (Michael Latham)