M. C. M. Beveridge
WorldFish, P. O. Box 51289, Ridgeway, Lusaka, Zambia
S. H. Thilsted
WorldFish, House 22B, Road 7,Block F, Banani, Dhaka 1213, Bangladesh,
M.J. Phillips
WorldFish, Jalan Batu Maung, Batu Maung,11960 Bayan Lepas, Penang, Malaysia,
M. Troell
Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm University,SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
S. J. Hall
Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm, Swede
Fish farming; Food security; Poverty and hunger
Socio-economic and Policy
FISH, FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY: Fish is an excellent source of high-quality animal protein and essential fatty acids, especially long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) and micronutrients, which are much greater in fishes than in terrestrial animal-source foods. Drawing on such evidence, a recent FAO – WHO expert consultation group concluded that among the general population, fish consumption is beneficial for individual growth and development, while consumption of a certain amount of fish (fatty fishes in particular) is associated with reduced risk of coronary heart disease and stroke (FAO – WHO, 2011). People are generally encouraged to increase consumption of fatty fishes two to three-fold in order to obtain sufficient quantities of LCPUFAs (Surette, 2008; Jenkinset al., 2009; FAO – WHO, 2011). Food-safety concerns about fish have centred on methylmercury and dioxin levels. There is no convincing evidence, however, for increased risk of heart disease linked with methylmercury while the potential cancer risks from dioxins are concluded to be well below coronary heart disease benefits associated with fish consumption (FAO – WHO, 2011). The benefits of fish consumption for vulnerable groups are also increasingly recognized and there is a growing interest in its potential to better contribute to food and nutrition security objectives through supplemental feeding and other food-based strategies (Rooset al., 2002, 2007c; Gibson et al., 2003). A controlled study in Malawi, for example, showed that individuals fed intervention diets containing significantly more soft-boned fishes had lower incidences of anaemia and common infections than those in the control group (Gibsonet al., 2003). Recognizing that eating fish is beneficial and encouraging people to do so are clearly insufficient to overcome undernutrition; issues of food availability, food access and food utilization must also be addressed. These imperatives are codified in the definition of food security adopted by the World Food Summit in 1996, which states that food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. The term ‘food and nutrition security’ incorporates the other pillars of good nutrition: care, health, hygiene water and sanitation (Klennert, 2009). A conceptual model showing how nutritional status is determined by these various causal factors is presented in Fig. 1. Individual nutritional status can be seen as an immediate outcome of nutrient intake, care and health. Nutrient intake is, in turn, governed by use and utilization, the former being dependent upon the food that is purchased by and shared within households, while the latter refers to the body's stability to utilize the nutrients consumed. The underlying causes of health status are in part not only environmental, determined by factors such as air quality, but also related to health care, housing, sanitation and access to clean water, sometimes worsened by inadequate nutrition, which predisposes individuals to disease. Avail-ability and access to food and nutrients, however, change over time and adequacy of dietary intake is affected by critical life stages such as pregnancy, lactation and early childhood.
Journal of Fish Biology(2013)83, 1067 – 1084
Journal