अमूर्त

Functional Food Security, Why not Just, Food Security; A View Point

Ram B Singh, Shaw Watanabe, Lekh R Juneja

It is noteworthy that both WHO and FAO have also joined hands to educate the world about the utility and necessity of functional foods for prevention of cardiovascular diseases(CVDs) and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) which is clear from 2017 websites of these agencies. In 2017, FAO was not aware about how much food available in the world. However, on November 9, 2018, there was news that 1.3 billion metric tonnes of food is available every year, which is enough to serve exiting total world population in a year. It seems, there is overemphasis on under nutrition which is more of political nature, mainly, due to poor distribution and lack of implementation of government policies, despite adequate availability of food in the world. It is suggested that FAO outlook should also include millets and new dairy products, in particular probiotics, and new omega-3 and tea flavonoid rich egg, which may become highly protective but inexpensive functional foods for the next decade. Functional food security, in particular increased production and consumption of millets can enhance the potential of food systems to become both more sustainable and more supportive of good nutritional outcomes. Further studies are needed to find out the impact of agricultural food-based interventions on nutritional and health outcomes.