CDT Fall 2022 - 47

STRATEGIES
Dr. Anthony Marotta
PhD. Chief Executive Officer
Member, Peqish Health and
Wellness Advisory Board
Peqish Food Company
S US TA INABIL I TY AND HUMAN WE LFA R E:
from a
CULINARY
MEDICINE PERSPECTIVE
With over 7 billion people inhabiting earth
and an estimated 10 billion by 2050, are
we heading for a global catastrophe that
puts the future welfare of humanity in
jeopardy? We all know that development
of more sustainable infrastructure is
required to protect future generations
and the planet.
What does sustainability entail?
Sustainability is multi-faceted in nature
involving a set of interconnected
modalities, inclusive of environmental and
economic factors together with health
and nutrition. Like a web, when pulling on
it in an analogous fashion (with changes
we make related to sustainability), these
modifications will have greater impact on
portions of the web in proximity to the
area where the force is applied. However,
the impact of these pressures or changes
will also be experienced in other distant
regions of the web. This is consistent with
Newton's third law in physics: " Action and
Reaction. " For every action there will be
an equal and opposite reaction.
In the 1980's, plastic bags were
introduced as a replacement to paper
bags. Why almost 40 years later are we
migrating back to using paper products
with a view of eliminating plastics?
We now know that plastic particles
are detectable in human blood and
can be readily absorbed-the possible
impacts of this goes far beyond the
visual of the " turtle and the straw " .1
Late within the same decade,
quick service began to dominate
the market and change our eating
behaviors. Price, product consistency
and shelf-life coupled with convenient
single use packaging began to
reform the way consumers and food
providers interacted with this " socalled
food " favoring the need for
more processing. Data evaluated by
the Global Burden of Disease (GBD)
2017 Diet Collaborators from 1990 to
2017 across 195 countries cites the
potential health ramifications of suboptimal
diets and the need for dietary
improvements across nations.2
Willett
et al. stated: " Unhealthy diets are
purported to pose a greater risk to
human morbidity and mortality when
compared to unsafe sex, alcohol, drug
and tobacco used combined " .3
STRATEGIES FROM A CULINARY MEDICINE PERSPECTIvE | CAMPUS DINING TODAY
47
CDT Fall 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CDT Fall 2022
