Nutritional Security and Robust Food Systems: Cornerstones of Population Health Promotion

The Health Promotion and Food Production in Cities Report , produced with the participation of researchers from the Faculty of Public Health (FSP) of the University of São Paulo, summarizes the results of an analysis carried out jointly by teams from Instituto Escolhas and Josué de Castro Chair in Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems. Nadine Marques, researcher at the Chair of the Faculty of Public Health at USP, explains the importance of food safety for promoting public health among the population.

According to the expert, the definition of health promotion involves a much broader concept than just the treatment and prevention of diseases. She explains that this term encompasses a set of intervention strategies and policies that seek to improve the quality of life of individuals, acting on a variety of conditions called social determinants.

From this perspective, the researcher says that food systems and nutritional security are an important part of health promotion, because, in addition to promoting greater social well-being, they promote a series of benefits in combating cardiovascular diseases and problems with obesity. She says that overweight problems are already observed in both the adult and child population and even the most developed countries are facing difficulties in alleviating this condition. “So, health promotion is very important in this matter of promoting well-being and anticipating problems, precisely so as not to need to act in the treatment or cure of one of these diseases. The aim of food safety and health promotion is to really act on prevention, to prevent these problems from happening”, she explains.

Poor nutrition

According to Nadine, poor nutrition causes two alarming conditions that can often be understood as opposing factors, when, in fact, they can be present in the same individual: malnutrition and obesity. She says that a person may be malnourished because they have deficiencies of vitamins and minerals in their body due to the lack of consumption of fresh and natural foods, such as cereals, vegetables, fruits and greens. On the other hand, this same individual, even if malnourished, may be obese due to frequently eating so-called ultra-processed foods, which are rich in fats, sugars, sodium and preservatives.

The expert says that people’s diet is influenced by food environments, which are the set of physical, financial, sociocultural and political conditions that will influence access to food and its quality, in addition to people’s food choices and preferences. “This is observed in countries where the preference for the consumption of high-calorie products with few nutrients predominates, that is, ultra-processed products, those preferred by fast food chains. So, nowadays, we see an increase in the consumption of ultra-processed foods at the expense of fresh and natural foods,” she says.

Food production

For Nadine Marques, one of the factors that could contribute to increasing the consumption of healthy foods among the population is bringing production closer to large urban areas, so that the processing and logistics stages are smaller and, consequently, the final prices of these foods decrease. This way, she says, people would be better able to include fruits and vegetables in their diet, as well as gradually reduce their consumption of ultra-processed foods.

“Therefore, this report has been developed with a keen eye on food production in the city, both with a view to ensuring food and nutritional security and promoting health, which is the main focus. Then it was observed that urban agriculture in metropolises like São Paulo has the capacity to supply the population and combat the so-called food monotony, as well as the intake of ultra-processed foods”, he concludes.