We are facing a global crisis in food and nutrition.
The human population of the planet was one billion in 1804. It took 123 years to add a further billion. By 2000 the figure was six billion. After 10 more years another billion was added. Soon the population will be eight billion, then nine billion… So where is all the extra food going to come from?
The solution posed to meet the lack of arable land to feed the population of the immediate future is more intensification and genetic modification of foods. But in recent time something has gone wrong with the basic food system:
- Contemporary food production systems neglect sea-derived, brain-specific fatty nutrients – DHA in particular – and the essential trace elements needed by the brain. Production is based on protein and calories: i.e. on the nutrient requirements for body growth and weight gain, not brain development.
- There are two billion people at risk of iodine deficiency disease, the commonest cause of mental retardation. As iodine and brain-specific fatty acids co-exist in the marine food web, this means the same number of people are deficient in DHA.
- One of the problems has been the increasing focus on the production of land-based foods. We need a balance of land and sea food if we are to maintain our intelligence and mental health. We can’t get the brain-specific nutritional resources we need from the land alone. Further intensification of land, as currently proposed, will make the situation worse.
However, based on our current hunter-gatherer approach to sea fishing, there is simply not enough sea food to provide the required amount of brain-specific nutrients for the present seven billion people on the planet, never mind the billions more to come in the future.