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Global perspectives on ethnicity, health, and food security

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Ecology of Food and Nutrition (EFN) promotes scholarly discussion and engagement on the holistic and cross-cultural dimensions of the study of food and nutrition. Articles published in this journal focus… Click to show full abstract

Ecology of Food and Nutrition (EFN) promotes scholarly discussion and engagement on the holistic and cross-cultural dimensions of the study of food and nutrition. Articles published in this journal focus on foods and food systems not only in terms of their utilization to satisfy human nutritional needs and health, but also how social and cultural factors relate to food, food cultures, and nutrition. Only a handful of journals publish articles that explicitly address the intersections of food and nutrition, biology and culture, and policy and practice from a holistic and global perspective. It is this kind of scholarship that EFN seeks to promote. This issue of EFN includes seven articles based on scholarly research conducted in Ethiopia, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States of America. The articles focus on several unique issues related to infant feeding practices, household strategies during times of food insecurity, schoolbased nutrition education intervention, and orthorexia nervosa. The article by Deubel et al. presents the results of a qualitative study exploring beliefs and practices of breastfeeding among African American women receiving care at a publicly funded clinic and delivering in an associated urban hospital in Tampa, Florida. The authors examine the interpersonal, sociocultural, and institutional barriers to breastfeeding. The results highlight some of the challenges faced by women, including lack of maternity leave, social pressures to start formula feeding, absence of breastfeeding role models and limited support network. Based on their findings, the authors recommend that efforts to increase breastfeeding by African American women must be culturally appropriate and address underlying personal, socioeconomic, and structural barriers. Based on an in-depth qualitative study to understand facilitators and barriers to food security, Khakpour and colleagues report elevated levels of hunger and food insecurity in Afghan refugee households in Karachi, Pakistan. The results of this study suggest that the length of the residence and the level of integration into the host country’s culture do not have a significant impact on the level of food insecurity among Afghan refugees. The authors recommend that aid organizations involved in repatriation of Afghan refugees should be aware of the challenges of chronic food insecurity and the associated health complications. The article by Sang-ngoen and colleagues presents the results of a cross-sectional study examining the relationshp between natural environment or setting and consumption and accessibility of food in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand. The authors collected data on 128 women (65 hill tribe setting and 63 urban setting) using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The authors argue that education and income gaps may, in part, explain differences in food consumption patterns among ethnic groups in Thailand. These results could potentially inform the reported health disparities among ethnic groups in Thailand and have wider ramifications for implementing strategies to promote healthy eating and living. The article by Dansa et al. presents the findings of an evaluative study of an schoolbased nutrition education intervention to combat undernutrition by improving consumption of lentils among adolescent girls (n = 66) in Ethiopia. The researchers adopted ECOLOGY OF FOOD AND NUTRITION 2019, VOL. 58, NO. 4, 299–300 https://doi.org/10.1080/03670244.2019.1636538

Keywords: food insecurity; health; food; ecology; food nutrition

Journal Title: Ecology of Food and Nutrition
Year Published: 2019

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