Policy Problems in Formulating a Sustainable and Effective Food Policy
The present food system is vastly affecting the environmental concern of past years. It impacts on the entire food processing from production to processing, packaging, distribution and waste disposal. The entire process has increased the chances of the diseases like type2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, malnutrition, and osteoporosis. Moreover, the inappropriate food system increase the obesity level that results in high blood pressure, blood sugar, increased amount of triglyceride in blood and excess cholesterol (Chigumete et al., 2016). This study will tend to focus on the effect of unhygienic food policy and an unhealthy diet. After reviewing the unsustainable dietary issue the study will focus on the several causes of implementing the true food policy. The policy interventions will also be highlighted in a précised manner to elaborate the aspects of policy formulations for a healthy and sustainable diet. The conclusion will summarise the study followed by providing some recommendations for the betterment of the situation.
The evidence-based food policy identification is a most rational process to identify the scopes of sustainable food policy-making process. The evidence is the most systematic process to interpret scientific methods to empirical data. The evidence-based food policy practice is completely dependent on the knowledge-based human actions. The evidence makes the decision making the process easier in the policy-making process. Moreover, it helps to change the existing policy if the loophole is identified in the existing policy (Craig and Annison, 2011). Evidence help to signify the opinions and speculations of the policy-making process.
The evidence is important in policy making as assumes a rational direction of sustainable food process that helps to collect systematically arranged data. Moreover, it helps in collecting rigorous sand wild form of data that motivates their policy-making process. The evidence of a potential relationship between a variable and public health supervises the human health concern regarding sustainable diet. On the contrary, lack of evidence would result in a lack of proper health data, lack of developed food policy and effective epidemiological function. It influences unhygienic and unhealthy food habit (Dalbo et al., 2017). Hence, unhygienic food habit and the improper dietary system would result in the unfit body, increased obesity, and unaligned body mass index. A recent has unfolded the fact that unhealthy diet increases 11% chance of critical diseases. Moreover, the body mass index jumps up to 9% that increases the chances of heart attack and brain stroke.
Impact of Unhealthy Food System on Health and Environment
Presently the use of scientific evidence-based food policy helps to increase the effectiveness of health interventions of public health policies in Australia. Evidence-based medicines are provided to take care of the patients suffering from the unhygienic diet (Dickson-Spillmann and Siegrist, 2010). Thus, the evidence-based policies are ethically sustainable to treat the patients of unhygienic and unhealthy diet.
The rigorous policymaking was widely criticised by the researchers. The problems that are identified are :
- It is unrealistic because the wide range of data and evidence can be collected in the shorter time frame
- It is challenging because it does not provide comprehensive data. The data that are provided are large by quantity but lacks quality (Green et al., 2018).
Food policies cannot be developed by rational use of information. Instead, policymakers seek for a progressive way to look for epidemiological information. The policies should be formidable according to the health issues. In order to develop a formidable health policy, it is required a constructing evidence and translating evidence.
Constructing evidence
The evidence is generally collected from policy evaluation. The evidence seeks a developmental approach. To define a food policy innovation, it is not prior to describing the historical aspects of the food. Instead, it requires a prior evidence through which the policymakers can easily access to the decision making process. Best evidence accumulate a good number of food policies that are applicable to locate the public health problem (Harray et al., 2018).
Translating evidence
Both research and policy must qualify each other to develop translating evidence. The confusion sustains on the effect of public policy on the public policy research. Scientific experts generally appoint scientific motivation to develop policy legitimisation moreover; change of policy separates the new knowledge to old knowledge. In this case, the epidemiologists play a pivotal part in changing policies or creating new policies with the help of epid3emiological data (Haugen and Musser, 2012).
Hence, this can be stated that the analysis of the policy problems would be helpful to understand the flaws and loopholes in the existing policies and the effect of change policy on the hygienic food system.
The unhealthy dietary system has increased the human obesity to a pandemic proportion. As reported, around .5 million people around Australia are suffering from overweight what they cannot mitigate by any mean. However, it is due to their unhealthy food habits that have increased their body weight and are found to be affected by obesity. Out of .5 million obese people of Australia, more than 505 are at high death risk. Public health is correlated with the environment (Lee et al., 2016). The cost of environmental food production is very high and around 70% of fresh usable water is used in the agricultural field. Moreover., the agricultural food production is largely responsible for the 30% of greenhouse gas emission. Thus, the changing pattern of the food consumption has a strong impact on the environmental challenges around Australia. Only a healthy and sustainable diet can reduce the human and environmental damage. However, not a single specific definition is available for a healthy and sustainable diet. On the contrary, reduction of processes and red meat, excessive drinking and smoking can be a handy medium to achieve the initial stage of the healthy diet.
Role of Evidence-Based Research in Formulating Sustainable Objectives for a Healthy Diet
Excessive consumption of red and processed meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. The excessive consumption of alcohol results in liver damage. In addition, the environmental concern that lies here is as follows:
- The livestock products are the reasons behind the agricultural deforestation. It releases around 15% of the global anthropogenic emission.
- If the present trend of food habit remains unchanged in the next ten years, the average temperature of the earth surface will be increased to 2C.
- The red meat consumption would increase the more gazing of sheep and goat-like animals. Thus, it would result in the loss of biodiversity (Miller, 2011).
Palm oil consumption
Human concern: Palm oil consists of highly saturated fat. Thus the consumption of palm oil made food limitlessly would result in severe cardiovascular diseases.
Environmental concern:
- The palm oil is responsible for 8% of the total agriculture-related deforestation
- Stocks excessive amount of carbon in the climate and increase high biodiversity in the low land areas of Australia.
Sugar consumption
Human Concern
- Consumption of excess sugar is directly linked to the provocation of diabetes.
- High level of sugar consumption results in cardiovascular diseases (Morley et al., 2012).
Environmental concern
- Sugar is generally made from sugarcane, maize, and sugar beet. thus, the problems related to the sugar consumption is the soil erosion, soil degradation and air pollution due to industrial monocropping of sugar
- Sugarcane is one of the key factors to crop deforestation of deploying around 5% of the healthy environment.
The evidence-based researches play a crucial role in formulating sustainable objectives for a healthy diet. It has a strong impact on the restrictive and fiscal food measures. The evidence-based researches highlight the consequences of the unhealthy food habits that point out the substitute foods instead of the unhygienic foods (Hunnicutt, 2010). Therefore they have developed some approaches that are applicable to reduce the number of unhygienic food habitats. The approaches are nudging customers for a better choice, providing customers with fiscal incentives for better choice and banning undesirable foods.
A three-way policy can be developed to promote healthy and sustainable diets among the people of Australia to set a form of coherent in their existing policies. The ways are – inform and empower, guide and influence and incentivize and discourage.
Inform and empower
Better information
- Public information campaigns: for developing a sustainable food habit, the government must arrange a public information campaign to reduce the number of unhealthy food from the daily diet. However, these kinds of campaigns can just be an initiative for better food habit, not an overall change in food habit (Paddock, 2017).
- Guidelines: The Australian government must adopt a healthy dietary guideline and include that in the educational campaigns. The guidelines can influence a large section of society. Moreover, it would offer the food manufacturers, restaurants, hospitals, and schools to be aware of the government guidelines and maintain hygiene quality while serving it.
- Labelling: food manufacturers must label their foods with additional environmental concerns and nutritional information. They must mention the information on the amount of fat, carbohydrate, salt, sugar and other ingredients contained in the food product. This might impact on the consumer awareness (Pettigrew, Pescud and Donovan, 2012). Moreover, this information is easily reachable to a maximum number of consumers and they can be aware while consuming the food.
- Certification : Labelling is greatly related to the certification of the product. Presently, the food manufacturers are more concerned about certification than that of labelling. This enables the customer to choose one of their preferable products out of various alternatives. Commodity certification scheme, sugarcane certification scheme and sustainable palm oil certification schemes of Australia set a great social and environmental concern. Certification scheme especially highlights the authenticity of the product regarding the legal and environmental concern.
Normative feedback
People generally change when they deliberately get information on the harmfulness of a few food products. It encourages them to opt for a healthy and sustainable food item. However, the changes in information are unsustainable and consumers could again back to their older strategy of having unhygienic food habit. Thus, this study requires more attention and research to bring a radical change in the food habit (Reisch, 2016).
Guide and influence
Change of price sand providing of information can affect the behaviour of the customers. However, food behaviours are not always out of choice, it may be out of situational demand. For example- if a person wants to quit eating chocolates to lose his weight, he would never pick up a chocolate from a shop by choice. However, the retailer designs his chocolate shop in such a way that it provokes the person to be compelled to buy at least one chocolate to taste. This influence cannot be avoided through government guidelines and information. These are widely acknowledged techniques for the retailers to sell their products. This requires a change of strategy. The strategy must be changed in such a way that would change the contextual cues and retailers would be bound to change their selling strategy for the sake of a larger perspective. This strategy is called nudge strategy where the lowering of the cost would not be beneficial for the retailers and they cannot avoid the government regulations to avoid the regulations for a sustainable diet (Wood, Tenbensel and Utter, 2013). The components of nudge strategy are increasing in pension enrolment; improve diet, an increase of physical activity, and reduction of alcohol consumption.
Approaches to Promote Healthy and Sustainable Diets in Australia
The commercial application of the policies is largely dependent on the willingness of the policy makers and politicians. However, evidently, the nudge strategy is a successful strategy to develop sustainable food habits among the consumers. Nudge is an important interventional strategy to hold the institutional settings of sustainable human health. The commercial organisations must use the Nudge strategy to balance their financial need and environmental concern. Hence, the public health is chiefly dependant on the voluntary agreements of the health interventions (Martin et al., 2003). The rise of alcohol and tobacco industry is indirectly affecting the sustainable diet for public and results in an indirect environmental loss. The voluntary agreements must be improved with the effective use of economic incentives and sanctions.
It includes the voluntary involvement of the sustainable ingredients in the daily food habits. For example- green vegetables, sustainable palm oils, and sugar-free foods. It is the duty f the government organisations to reduce the unhealthy food ingredients from the daily food habit. This can be done by the application of strong state rules and food policies. The steps include
- The ban on the selling of unhealthy foods
- High tax rates on the unhealthy foods
- Subsidize the healthy food and promote propel to buy more healthy and less caloric foods
- Excluding the unhealthy foods from the public daily habit and procurement.
The restriction of the unhealthy foods is a much-needed step in the health arena for the sake of larger part of the social and environmental concern. The hydrogenated oil must be restricted and primary source of dietary fats must be checked in the government laboratory to find the level of fat resides in it (Chigumete et al., 2016). Moreover, the amount of tax must be increased on the selling of unhealthy food product. The lack of sufficient data evidence is the makes the assessment of the fiscal measures on the unhealthy food difficult.
However, the fiscal measures and restriction of unhealthy food still remain as an emergency intervention for the sustainable human diet.
Conclusion
The study has discussed several aspects of a sustainable diet. Limitless sugar, unhygienic palm oil, red meat, alcohol consumption, and smoking are identified as the parts of the unsustainable diet. Linear evidence-based research has been identified as the key measure to locate the number of unhealthy food consumers and an unhealthy diet. Information and empower, guide and influence and incentivise, discourage and restrict are three key steps to reduce the number of unhealthy foods from human food chart. Moreover, the reduction of unhealthy food ingredients would also be beneficial for the larger environmental concern.
References
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