WHO'S IN SEATTLE

From the UC Davis Program in International and Community Nutrition:

• Kay Dewey, distinguished professor, nutrition
• Lindsay Allen, professor emerita, nutrition, and director, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Western Human Nutrition Research Center
• Joanne Arsenault, associate project scientist, nutrition
• Sonja Hess, associate researcher, nutrition
• Reina Engle-Stone, postdoctoral student

Other participants:

• Michael Carter, professor, agricultural and resource economics, and director, BASIS Assets and Market Access Innovation Lab
• Beth Mitcham, director, Horticulture Innovation Lab and Postharvest Technology Center, Department of Plant Sciences
• Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, professor, anthropology

From the World Food Center:

• Josette Lewis, assistant director (moderator)
• Amanda Lewis, International Agricultural Development
• Jessica Sharkey

Related story: UC Davis observes World Food Day

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By Pat Bailey

The UC Davis World Food Center is the organizer for the agriculture and nutrition track at this week’s Grand Challenges 2.0 presented by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The agriculture and nutrition track at the Oct. 6-7 conference in Seattle focuses on how communities and individuals can transition to healthy diets as their incomes increase, rather than to energy-dense foods associated with chronic disease.

“Poor families unequally bear the health burdens of undernutrition, micronutrient malnutrition and diet-related chronic diseases,” said Josette Lewis, associate director of the World Food Center. “And, ironically, malnutrition rates are often higher among those populations engaged in agriculture and food production.”

She said the daily diets of the poor often lack adequate diversity and are particularly low in meat, dairy products, fruits and vegetables. 

Lewis noted that, in many parts of the world, demographic shifts are leading to increased incomes that alleviate extreme hunger but fail to introduce a pattern of healthful eating. As a result of this phenomenon, known as nutrition transition, individuals are vulnerable to nutrition-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, yet many still suffer from micronutrient malnutrition.

“In order to address these types of complex problems, we need to eliminate disciplinary boundaries and draw together individuals who collectively have a broad range of expertise,” Lewis said.

UC Davis has a long history of solving agricultural problems in low-income communities in the United States and abroad. Campus expertise spans the farm-to-fork continuum, ranging from plant breeding and seed development to commodity production and postharvest technology to food science and nutrition. Ongoing university research involves a variety of crops and food animals, ranging from coffee to cattle.

“And the World Food Center at UC Davis is ideally suited to facilitating interdisciplinary thinking around food systems approaches that will better prepare people make a healthy nutrition transition,” Lewis said. “We are eager to better link agriculture and nutrition by shaping the strategies of international development practitioners, researchers and policymakers.“

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