Gabrielle O’Kane (2011) Public Health Nutrition: 15(2), 268–276 doi:10.1017/S136898001100142X
The current, globalised food system supplies ‘cheap’ food to a large proportion of
the world’s population, but with significant social, environmental and health costs
that are poorly understood. The present paper examines the nature and extent of
these costs for both rural and urban communities, by illustrating the financial
pressures on food producers and manufacturers to produce cheap food, the dis-
connection people experience with how and where their food is produced, and the
rise in obesity levels that plague the globe. The paper then proposes that community
food systems may play an
important role in mitigating the adverse environmental,
economic and social effects of the dominant food system, by
the use of more
sustainable food production methods, the development of local economies and
enabling closer connections between farmers and consumers.
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