Re-emphasizing food as basic medicine of public health to reclaim hunger in health discourse

Abstract

Food is crucial to ensuring human well being. However, prevalence of widespread hunger and malnutrition in the world, especially in times when mankind has the capability to feed all the people in the world to enable them to have healthy and productive lives, obliges us to reiterate the public health importance of adequate food for ensuring human well-being. Health is perhaps the best marker of human well-being, and improved health inter-alia is reflected in longevity of human life – put simply, the ability of man to live. Talking of human health, the spectacular technological achievements of modern medical science tend to dwarf every other determinant of health in popular perception. This has tended to undermine the primary importance of food strategies in ensuring human well being. Beginning with McKewon’s thesis on the modern rise of population in England and Whales, we rely on other evidence available in literature to establish the primacy of food, over and above medical technologies, in ensuring health and thereby well being of human race. In order to further highlight the importance of ‘hunger’ in public debate, the paper examines the shift from ‘Hunger’ to more scientified terminology of ‘Nutrition’ as a strategy by the vested interests to invisibalise the larger question of ‘Hunger.’ Conclusions are accordingly drawn at the end.