Food and Public Health: Contemporary Issues and Future Directions

This book focuses on food policy, and its relationship to public health, as an increasingly important issue in today’s society. Contributors highlight the lack of global regulation in the food supply chain and explore the common tendency to leave regulation to markets and to individual consumer decisions. In a period where there is growing concern about the sustainability of contemporary food systems, this book considers the inadequate response made to issues of food waste where solutions in high income countries are dependent on lifestyle and consumer behaviour. It offers an insight in to the importance of people’s everyday lives in relation to policies on public health, food and sustainability. The text demonstrates the corrosive impact of social inequality, and the futility of identifying lower income consumers as flawed when aiming for food policies that seek to achieve improvements in public health. Factors such as technological developments, ecological concerns and international trade are also taken in to account. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Public Health.

Table of Contents:
1. Food and public health: contemporary issues and future directions Ulla Gustafsson, Wendy Wills and Alizon Draper 2. ‘Globesization’: ecological evidence on the relationship between fast food outlets and obesity among 26 advanced economies Roberto De Vogli, Anne Kouvonen and David Gimeno 3. Food for thought: menu labeling as obesity prevention public health Policy Claudia Chaufan, Patrick Fox and Gee Hee Hong 4. Thinking about ‘food security’: engaging with UK consumers Elizabeth A. Dowler, Moya Kneafsey, Hannah Lambie, Alex Inman and Rosemary Collier 5. Hunger and nutritional poverty in Germany: quantitative and qualitative empirical insights Sabine Pfeiffer, Tobias Ritter and Andreas Hirseland 6. ‘It’s a full time job being poor’: understanding barriers to diabetes prevention in immigrant communities in the USA Claudia Chaufan, Sophia Constantino and Meagan Davis 7. Blaming the consumer – once again: the social and material contexts of everyday food waste practices in some English households David Evans 8. Health improvement, nutrition-related behaviour and the role of school meals: the usefulness of a socio-ecological perspective to inform policy design, implementation and evaluation Sue N. Moore, Simon Murphy and Laurence Moore 9. Food insecurity in South Australian single parents: an assessment of the livelihoods framework approach Iain R. Law, Paul R. Ward and John Coveney 10. Doing ‘healthier’ food in everyday life? A qualitative study of how Pakistani Danes handle nutritional communication Bente Halkier and Iben Jensen 11. A focus group study of food safety practices in relation to listeriosis among the over-60s Richard Milne 12. Preventing anxiety: a qualitative study of fish consumption and pregnancy Helene Brembeck

About the Author :
Dr Wendy Wills is Reader in Food and Public Health in the Centre for Research for Primary and Community Care (CRIPACC) at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. She is a sociologist and public health nutritionist. Dr Alizon Draper is a Reader in public health nutrition at the University of Westminster, UK. She has a background in social anthropology and her work has focused on the social and policy aspects of nutrition. Dr Ulla Gustafsson is a Principal Lecturer at Roehampton University, UK. She is a medical sociologist with interests in food policy, public health, school meals and young people’s career and education choices.