Food Security and Food Sciences
Food security features as one of the dynamic and complex challenge that the humanity
ever faced in its history. Before talking about inter-relationship between food security and food
sciences, it would be worthwhile to review the most accepted definitions of both terms.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): ‘Food Security’ exists
when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient,
safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
According to the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT): ‘Food Science’ is the discipline in which biology,
physical sciences, and engineering are used to study the nature of foods,
the causes of their deterioration, and the principles underlying food processing.
Analysis of the nature of global food security challenge reveals that it is associated
with several other issues; increasing world population, changing diet patterns, falling water
tables, growing number of hungry individuals, deteriorating agriculture soils, decreasing agriculture yields, climate change, and running short of time.
Yes, we are just over seven billion now and will be nine billion by 2050 on the same size
planet – the earth. In other words, the world population clock is ticking continuously
and every second passed adding to our total number dwelling on the earth.
Therefore, complexity of this challenge demands urgent measures rather to assume
that the food crisis situation will develop after couple of decades in 2030 or 2050.
Adv Food Technol Nutr Sci Open J. 2014; SE(1): Se1-Se2. doi: 10.17140/AFTNSOJ-SE-1-e001
