Food and nutrition for all

The science of nutrition has characterized the essential nature of nutrients their functions and their pathologies of deficiency. In the past two decades the science of nutrition has moved the goalposts away from the provision of nutrient intake merely to avoid the pathologies of deficiency towards the concept that nutrients have disease prevention functions at intakes above the deficiency threshold. Just as technology-driven diagnoses and therapies will affect diet and health at the individual level technology-driven solution in terms of food structure will also be available to the population or those lucky enough to have the economic resources to use them. In trying to predict how the future will look in terms of food choice several factors must be taken into account: potential deterioration of the global environment population growth availability of land farming and existing and unforeseen technological resolutions of conflicts between the environment and the population. What cannot be predicted is the ability of the technological advances to stretch the balance between resources of the earth to sustain mankind and mankinds demand on those resources. One final barrier that needs to be overcome is the physical inactivity. If the developed world is content to be physically inactive then the strategy for optimal nutrition may be dependent on the state and optimal nutrition for the slob may be more difficult to define than that for the physically active.