Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Food and Nutrition: Totally Dependent on Other Organisms - Coggle Diagram
Food and Nutrition: Totally Dependent on Other Organisms
Where does it come from?
Although all human nutrition comes from other organisms, only a tiny number of species feed the majority of the world
Unsustainable diets are usually based on a high percentage of animal derived protein
As of 2016, food production is as follows
GRAIN - 2.5 billion metric tons/year
MEAT - 262.8 million metric tons/year
WILD FISH - 105 million metric tons/year
AQUACULTURE - 105 million metric tons/year
Instead most protein is derived from grain
How is it distributed?
One must think of distribution in terms of energy first
It is more efficient to consume grain directly instead of feeding it to animals and then consuming the animals
Rule of 10s
Only 10% of the energy will always be available for the next trophic level and the rest will be lost as heat to the universe; more producers than consumers
So, diets like the average American's, that derive up to 30% of the protein from animals are terribly inefficient; even diets that derive only 10% can only be applied to a small part of the earth's population
This is why growth in terms of food production must be centered around the increase of cultivable land. Regions that house developing countries and increasing populations already base less that 10% of their diets in animal protein given their socioeconomic conditions
Plants will store 100% of the energy after photosynthesis, animals that consume the plants will store only 10% of the energy, and animals that consume the other animals will store 1% of the energy, so on and so forth
How fragile is it?
Hunger usually reflects a complete lack of access to food and an overall deficit in kilocalories, while malnutrition tends to reflect improper access to nutritious food
With the recommended daily caloric intake between 2000 and 2700 kilocalories, as many as 795 million people in the world suffer from chronic undernourishment (one in every nine)
Commonly a product of:
Poor and inefficient management of cultivable land and resources
Climate change has intensified droughts and floods as weather patterns are shifted
Intentional withholding of food
The population growth is surpassing the amount of food available; food security has become tightly connected to the amount of people on earth
Food wastage is rampant