Traditional Diets: Sustainability, Sovereignty, Safety, Food Security and Health Dimensions
A special issue of Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutrition and Public Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2022) | Viewed by 18622
Special Issue Editors
Interests: environmental contaminants; ocean changes; marine traditional and local foods; indigenous and coastal populations’ health; knowledge mobilization
Interests: food security; food systems; food sovereignty; food environments; nutrition; noncommunicable diseases; global health; indigenous health
Interests: food systems; nutrition transition; indigenous health; traditional food; inequalities in nutrition and health; malnutrition
Interests: public health nutrition of Indigenous population; health inequities by addressing the social determinants of health using participatory research
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The deep and enduring relationships between Indigenous Peoples and lands, waters, wildlife, and plants are well documented. Indigenous populations rely on traditional foods harvested or grown on their homelands to sustain cultural continuity and identity, culinary preferences, livelihoods, intergenerational knowledge sharing, food security, nutrition, and physical, social, and emotional health.
Traditional foods are real foods: they are minimally processed, of exceptional nutritional quality, and as Indigenous colleagues often say, “they taste very good and connect us to the land”. Indigenous Peoples have been marginalized in most countries and face a larger burden of economic disadvantage with consequences for the attainment of food security as well as higher prevalence of ill health, including nutrition-related chronic disease. These burdens that are associated with territorial estrangement and loss of sovereignty highlight the importance of traditional foods in combating food insecurity and preventing ill health. However, the sustainability, availability, access, and nutritional quality of these foods have been threatened by ongoing colonial policies and processes that have disrupted the relationships between Indigenous communities and their homelands. Further, global climate change, environmental contaminants, and zoonotic pathogens exacerbate existing challenges to accessing safe traditional foods. Shifting demography in Indigenous communities, as well as poor quality of market foods and their high prices in more remote communities, exert additional pressures on community food security, with implications for dietary adequacy and nutritional health. These threats to Indigenous traditional food systems constitute one of many health inequities and environmental injustices faced by Indigenous communities globally. To address such challenges, it is necessary to co-develop evidence through strong community-based participatory approaches to strengthen Indigenous food systems through monitoring and research that lead to scalable localized adaptation strategies and global advocacy. Indigenous communities have shown strong resilience and adaptive capacity to the complex threats to traditional food systems, and promoting safe and sustainable traditional food systems can reconnect Indigenous communities with their identities, traditions, and lands.
With this Special Issue, “Traditional diets: Sustainability, Sovereignty, Safety, Food Security, and Health Dimensions”, we aim to highlight a series of papers fostering innovative approaches to building an evidence base on these important issues to sustain reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples and mobilize knowledge to mitigate nutrition and health inequities in Indigenous communities.
Prof. Dr. Mélanie Lemire
Dr. Matthew Little
Prof. Dr. Malek Batal
Prof. Dr. Treena Wasonti:io Delormier
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- traditional foods
- country foods
- indigenous health
- indigenous knowledge
- food systems
- food security
- nutrition transition
- global changes
- environmental contaminants
- inequalities in nutrition and health
- environmental justice
