Nutrition and Illness Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Nutrition and Illness - Research Paper Example There has been enough epidemiological evidence that shows the risk factors and nutritional levels. In the past decades, there have been rapid changes in the scientific world; these developments have shown that nutrition plays a very crucial role in the prevention and control of morbidity and serious illnesses in people which do not originate from communicable diseases. There are various factors that have played a role in the poor dietary status of the people around the world. These have been attributed to natural calamities, droughts that have hit many places across the world, environmental changes that have led to unpredictable weather patterns, rapid changes in lifestyles and diets, urbanization, economic forms of development, as well as globalization of the market. These issues and others are posing a serious threat to the nutritional status of people; in this category, developing countries have been reported to be worse hit by the trend (Lipton, 2001). One would expect that stand ards of living which have improved, expansion of food availability, diversification of food options, and access to other services should be good for the maintenance of high nutritional diet. However, this is not the case. There have been reported very significant negative impacts that have resulted from inappropriate patterns in dietary; they have decreased the physical activity levels of the people and also led to a corresponding rise in the chronic diseases that are related to diet. Poor people or those who live below the threshold of one USD per day are most affected. Food production and sale have shifted from the local settings to an international market arena where global food cultures are being taken up in place of local preferences. As such, people do not pay a lot of attention to the nutritional value of what they eat (Jacobson & Silverglade). Many could attribute this to the every-demanding life where people have new challenges and new demands that must be met daily and, th us, do not take time to think about what they consume in terms of nutrients. Other attribute of this trend to the job market gives people less time to perform their personal tasks, such as cooking a good meal, at home. Changes in the world food economy have also been reflected in the dietary patterns being currently experienced. There has been a marked increase in the consumption of foods that are considered energy–dense with high content of fats; the worst being thee saturated fats with low carbohydrates that are not refined. When these patterns are put together with the decline experienced in the expenditure of energy in relation to the kind of sedentary lives that many people, especially in white collar jobs, lead, the only thing that remains is disaster in terms of illnesses that turn out to be very chronic. Nutrition gets even more complicated when sedentary kind of life comes into the picture. This paper takes a keen look at the nutrition and illness issue as one that i s affecting the global community in a health context. Analysis There are very alarming trends that are emerging in diseases or illnesses at the global arena. Recently, there have been present very striking events, most of which have been attributed to global causes, and these are directly related to the issue of nutrition. These trends and events that are taking centre stage on the international