Nursing Report: Obesity, Food Insecurity, and Sustainable Food Systems

This report examines the escalating rates of obesity and food insecurity, particularly within the Australian context. It highlights the increasing public health concerns associated with the dual burden of these issues, especially among children and adolescents. The report emphasizes the importance of sustainable food systems as a strategy to address both food security and obesity. It explores the need for policy and science efforts to focus on environmental and systemic factors to manage obesity. The analysis underscores the complexity of food systems, encompassing economic, political, social, and environmental frameworks. By adopting a food systems approach, the report advocates for strategies that promote community food justice and public health success. The report also references supporting literature, including studies on obesity prevalence and the impact of food systems on health.

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Although obesity and food insecurity historically have been viewed as distinct public health
issues, there has been increasing interest in understanding the association between obesity
and food insecurity, with escalating public health concerns over the dual burden of food
insecurity and obesity in certain populations. One approach to address this dual burden is
to promote sustainable food systems to both improve food security and prevent obesity.
Discuss
Obesity rate in Australia has greatly escalated over the previous years, increasing
amongst the adolescent, adults, and children. Just over a quarter (27 percent) of adolescents as
well as children between five and seventeen years were obese with 20 percent overweight, and
not obese. For children between 2 and 4 years, one in five (20 percent) were obese with the same
proportions of 9 percent of girls and 7 percent of boys of that age group being obese (Maiano,
Hue, Morin & Moullec, 2016). Moreover, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
stipulate that, a representative of children between two and five years demonstrated an escalation
in the rate of class 1 obesity from 1999- 2016 (Carsley et al., 2019, p.E351).
Food security should be addressed for all families to have access to ample food every
time to live a robust and energetic lives (Rogers et al., 2016, p.38). Where family members
encounter uncertainty about acquiring adequate food because of inadequate resources is regarded
food insecure. Food insecure families might encounter low food security, and frequently avert
considerably disorganizing their feeding habits via engaging in coping approaches like
involvement in federal food assistance programs, and eating less varied diets, alongside
accessing community feeding programs.
Focused awareness on how recent food system strategies and processes might affect
public health and dietary affiliated habitual disorder and obesity is vital in establishing a policy

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that concurrently attains community food justice along with public health success. Sustainable
food systems reinstate and reinforce ecological systems, entrust people to realize their right to a
full and healthful regime, and help food customers as well as producers to ascertain what food
they produce and eat, and how.
To successfully minimize the public health load of overweight, advocacy and science
efforts have to allineate the attention on environmental and systemic factors. This is to manage
maximal defects for person nutriment-affiliated behavior via making the wholesome option the
simple alternative. Therefore, adopting food systems approach enhances awareness of the food
systems complexity of the economic, political, social and environmental framework within
which they function (Rogers et al., 2016, p.38).

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References
Carsley, S., Pope, E.I., Anderson, L.N., Tremblay, M.S., Tu, K. and Birken, C.S., 2019.
Temporal trends in severe obesity prevalence in children and youth from primary care electronic
medical records in Ontario: a repeated cross-sectional study. CMAJ Open, 7(2), p.E351.
Maiano, C., Hue, O., Morin, A. J., & Moullec, G. (2016). Prevalence of overweight and obesity
among children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities: a systematic review and meta‐
analysis. Obesity Reviews, 17(7), 599-611.
Rogers, A., Ferguson, M., Ritchie, J., Van Den Boogaard, C., and Brimblecombe, J., 2016.
Strengthening food systems with remote Indigenous Australians: stakeholders' perspectives.
Health promotion international, 33(1), pp.38-48.