🍎Food Systems
This term describes the entire range of activities involved in producing, processing, distributing, consuming and disposing of food.
What is a food system?
According to the FAO definition, this exists when people have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences.
What is food security?
This concept goes a step beyond food security by considering whether the food consumed is nutritious and contributes to good health.
What is food and nutrition security?
This term refers to our attitudes and beliefs about food and the ways we acquire, store, prepare and consume foods.
What are foodways?
This traditional cooking tool is a large, flat, heavy cast-iron griddle traditionally used to make roti.
What is a tava/tawa?
In the food supply chain, this stage involves growing and cultivating crops or raising livestock.
What is agricultural production?
Name the FOUR dimensions of food security.
What are availability, access, utilization and stability?
Food and nutrition security focuses on these three aspects of the diet.
What are nutritional quality, diversity of diets and access to healthy foods?
Name TWO factors that can influence what people eat according to the syllabus.
What are childhood habits, social and economic circumstances, food availability, appetite, likes and dislikes, food fads, education, advertising or cultural traditions?
This pair utensils consists of a bowl-shaped vessel and a club-like stick used to crush ingredients such as corn, cocoa, coffee, cassava and yam.
What are a mortar and pestle?
Put these stages of the food supply chain in the correct order:
Consumption • Distribution • Agricultural production • Retailing • Processing
What is agricultural production → processing → distribution → retailing → consumption?
A family has plenty of food available in nearby shops, but their income is too low to purchase enough of it. Which dimension of food security is most directly affected?
What is accessibility/access?
A household has enough food but lacks potable water, adequate sanitation and access to health services. Why might the household still fail to achieve food and nutrition security?
What is because food security must be coupled with a sanitary environment, adequate health services and knowledgeable care?
This traditional Jamaican preparation method originated with the Maroons and involved cooking meat with herbs, spices, hot peppers and pimento leaves.
What is jerk?
A family has access to food, but misinformation about infant feeding causes them to follow harmful feeding practices. Which component of food and nutrition security is particularly relevant?
What is consumption and utilization?
A Caribbean country experiences increasing dependence on imported foods, while local agricultural production declines. Identify TWO possible consequences for the country’s food system.
What are decreased local agricultural production, loss of traditional food culture, nutritional impacts, economic leakage and/or environmental impacts?
A country has sufficient food available, but households experience frequent periods when food is unavailable because of economic instability and natural disasters. Which dimension of food security is most directly affected, and why?
What is stability, because food must be consistently available rather than available only intermittently?
A student is preparing a traditional Caribbean dish and wants to demonstrate how cultural food practices reflect different ethnic influences. Name TWO traditional tools or techniques from the presentation and identify the cultural influence associated with each.
What are examples such as tava — East Indian influence; karahi — Chinese influence; mortar and pestle — African influence; barbacoa/jerk — Taino and African/Maroon influences?