McKay John
Australian APEC Study Centre, Monash University, Melbourne.
Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2004;13(2):171-7.
This paper reviews the evidence on some of the major trends in economic development at a global level and assess their influence on food, nutrition and health. Food and nutrition are themselves broad topics, and each is influenced by a myriad of local and international forces, making them both interesting and important, but also challenging in their complexity. It is especially difficult to deal with such a vast and complicated terrain in such a short paper, and one must inevitably deal only superficially with a number of complex areas. This paper will review a number of key forces for change in the global system, with a focus on the implications of each for food and nutrition. Each area is central to the experience of economic, social and political development, particularly in the period since 1945, and each is tied in various ways with that complex and interrelated set of changes that we call globalisation. Seven key factors will be explored: global population growth, leading to strong pressures on world availability of arable land and food; increasing integration in the global economy, as measured through such things as trade, financial flows and information exchanges, and with specific implications for the food industry and for trade in food products; growing gaps between rich and poor countries; similar increases in disparities between rich and poor segments within individual countries; the rapid growth of cities in the developing world, resulting in massive challenges for the food supply systems of many nations; the growth within some countries, for example in a number of Asian countries, of a "new middle class" with distinctive patterns of consumption; and, high levels of population movements between countries resulting in the creation of significant communities of immigrants in a number of nations. Examples will be drawn from the two regions familiar to the author, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, but with a particular emphasis on East Asia.
本文回顾了全球经济发展一些主要趋势的相关证据，并评估了它们对食品、营养和健康的影响。食品和营养本身就是广泛的主题，且各自受到无数本地和国际力量的影响，这使得它们既有趣又重要，但复杂性也颇具挑战。在如此短的篇幅内处理如此广阔且复杂的领域尤其困难，因此不可避免地只能对一些复杂领域进行表面探讨。本文将审视全球体系中一些关键的变革力量，重点关注每一股力量对食品和营养的影响。自1945年以来，每个领域对于经济、社会和政治发展的历程都至关重要，并且每个领域都以各种方式与我们称之为全球化的一系列复杂且相互关联的变化紧密相连。我们将探讨七个关键因素：全球人口增长，给世界耕地和粮食供应带来巨大压力；通过贸易、资金流动和信息交流等方面衡量的全球经济一体化程度不断提高，对食品行业和食品贸易有特定影响；富国与穷国之间的差距不断扩大；各国贫富阶层之间的差距也有类似程度的增加；发展中世界城市的快速增长，给许多国家的食品供应系统带来巨大挑战；一些国家（例如许多亚洲国家）出现具有独特消费模式的“新中产阶级”；以及国家间大量的人口流动，在许多国家形成了规模可观的移民群体。本文将引用作者熟悉的两个地区——亚洲和撒哈拉以南非洲的例子，但将特别侧重于东亚地区。
