'Nutritional Globalization'

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1,0 (A), , course: Global Studies 221 -Globalization and Culture: the Cosmopolitan Village?, language: English, abstract: The topic of this essay is 'nutritional globalization' -respectively, the detrimental impacts it can have on our daily lives. The notion of 'nutritional globalization' for the purposes of this essay will include the following aspects: first of all, nowadays all kinds of comestibles can be sourced worldwide without any problems (Lang, 1999). This development is based on several economic processes such as trade liberalization and tariff reductions. Thus, comestibles which could formerly only be found in Asia for example, are now available all over the world. Hence, it can be argued that food is slowly losing its roots in terms of identification of a certain comestible with a certain culture. Second, the global food market is increasingly controlled by multinational corporations forcing smaller national enterprises and family farmers out of business (Lang, 1999). The third meaning refers to the spread of fast food which can be observed throughout the world. The fourth and last meaning refers to food and eating habits as a part of culture and a means of communication. Thus, we will observe 'nutritional globalization' on an economic and a cultural level. As will be demonstrated during the course of this essay, 'Nutritional globalization' as defined above has severe detrimental impacts not only on people's health - which is reflected in the ever-increasing number of chronic degenerative diseases - but also on people's social life.