Nutrition Transition and its Five Patterns

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Nutrition Transition
The world is dynamic, changing the economic, political, social, and dietary patterns with time. The nutrition sector changes as the world's fundamental sectors change. This change is referred to as nutrition transition. It is the shift in dietary consumption and energy expenditure that coincides with demographic, epidemiology, and economic changes. It explains the transition in the developing countries from the traditional nutritional system, which was high in fiber and cereals, to more westernized diets rich in fats, sugars, and animal-source food (El Rhazi et al. 2020). This pattern is influenced by the technological development that has led to globalization. The changes often overhaul people's way of life regarding what they consume and affect their health in the process. This paper discusses nutrition transition, expounding on nutrition transition patterns, including hunter-gatherer, early agriculture, end of the famine, obesity, and behavior change. On an individual level, nutrition transition has compromised people's immune systems, thus making them prone to lifestyle diseases. At the population level, it has led to an overhaul of dietary patterns, creating new trends in lifestyle diseases through urbanization which changes the choice of food and other behavioral changes.
According to El Rhazi et al. (2020), nutrition transition is the change that populations experience in the quantity and quality of dietary patterns and behaviors. The nutrition transition changes are proportional to other lifestyle-related factors like work and family environments, physical activity, and socioeconomic well-being that influence energy expenditure (Alaimo et al. 2020). Globally, dietary habits have changed to western habits. These changes followed five patterns.
The first pattern is hunter-gatherer, which was witnessed mostly during the active evolution of human beings. People in this pattern led an active lifestyle hunting animals and gathering fruits and vegetables for food in the forest (Obesity Prevention Source). Diets in this pattern are rich in fiber and natural protein from animal meat. People in this pattern are also physically fit due to frequent physical activity when hunting and gathering food in the forests.
Early agriculture is the second pattern in nutrition transition. This pattern, like the first, is highly associated with the evolution of man. Famine is common in this pattern, meaning people face difficulties with their body growth due to limited food (Obesity Prevention Source). As a result, people's individual growth was curtailed, decreasing their body fats.
The third pattern in the nutrition transition is receding famine, characterized by nutrition improvement as income rises. In this pattern, limited amounts of vegetables, fruits, and animal protein are increasingly introduced into the high fiber and low-fat diet. The last third of the previous millennium was characterized by a significant reduction in chronic diseases and famines, leading to a landmark shift in dietary patterns (Popkin 2019).
Nutrition-related non-communicable disease (NR-NCD) is the fourth pattern in nutrition transition. The fourth pattern is characterized by a diet rich in sugar, cholesterol, fat, other refined carbohydrates, and foods low in fiber and polyunsaturated fatty acids. High-income societies whose members live a sedentary life fit in this pattern. A sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of becoming obese (Popkin 2019). Therefore, in pattern four, income continued to grow, giving access to high-calorie food to people, making them less active, thus the rise in obesity and related diseases like heart diseases and diabetes.
Pattern five in nutrition transition is behavioral change, which responds to the rising obesity rate and related diseases. Individual people change their behaviors, and communities also advocate for behavior changes that can help prevent these conditions (Popkin 2019). Therefore, this is a new dietary pattern aimed at delaying or preventing degenerative diseases. The consumers or the government can institute these changes to create a massive nutrition transition. In the contemporary world, most people have remained in the last three patterns, which this paper consults heavily to discuss the effects of nutrition transition on individual and group health. They are significant in explaining changes in health at an individual and the population's levels.
Nutrition transition overhauled the dietary patterns globally, with people presently consuming food rich in calories, sugar, fat, and cholesterol (Himmelgreen et al. 2011). The fourth pattern explains this in detail. According to Bodirsky et al. (2020), processed food is readily available to serve the changing job and family needs. Most jobs are demanding, and people have little to no time to prepare healthy food, thus finding convenience in consuming processed food, increasing the chances of becoming obese and getting other lifestyle diseases.
Many people worldwide are experiencing an increase in chronic diseases l...