World Nutrition,
the journal of the World Public Health
Nutrition Association, is an
international on-line journal. But
there’s more to it than electronic
technology. The essential difference
between WN and other journals is
one of scope and attitude. Typically,
nutrition journals are mainly concerned
with information, and seek to describe
their world as it is. WN respects
facts, and at the same time it is mainly
concerned with ideas. It will see the
world as it is, and also as it can and
should be.
Other journals, notably Public Health
Nutrition, publish the findings of
original research. There is no need to
duplicate this essential function. The
need is for a journal whose contributors
have scope to think and reflect on the
significance of established and emerging
experience and evidence, and on how best
to shape policies and programmes that
protect the human species, the living
and physical world, and the biosphere,
now and in future. This is part of the
task of
World
Nutrition.
The vision
The vision of WN is of nutrition
as a social as well as a biological
science, guided by ethical, ecological
and evolutionary principles, and with
economic, environmental and other
dimensions.
Academic courses and textbooks, as well
as journals, popular writing, and most
types of practice, usually state or
assume that the science and discipline
of nutrition is biological. Nutrition
does have a foundation in biochemistry,
but is relevant and meaningful only
inasmuch as it recognises and promotes
family, community and population health,
and other public goods. By analogy,
architects are trained to know about the
tensile strength of bricks and steel,
but the discipline of architecture is
not a branch of physics.
The work of everybody concerned with the
health, welfare and well-being of
populations has social, cultural,
economic, environmental and political
contexts. This is true in China and
India, South Africa and the Sudan, Iraq
and Afghanistan, Australia, Japan,
Chile, Cuba, Sweden, Israel, Greece,
Britain, and the United States of
America. It is true everywhere.
Properly perceived, nutrition is
public health nutrition. This implies
good understanding of associated
disciplines, and engagement or alliances
between actors at all levels in
government, civil society, industry, the
media, and other professions. It also
implies acceptance that changes in the
nutritional health of populations are
usually not the result of actions for
which nutrition professionals are
responsible.
The big picture
The perennial crisis of undernutrition
illustrates the need to see the big
picture. Food and nutrition security is
fundamental to human health, welfare,
potential, and progress. So is regional,
national, and local independence and
self-determination, and that of
communities and families.
In emergency and acute situations,
adequate nutrition is often necessarily
supplied, if not sustained, by external
intervention. But populations whose
communities and families are sometimes,
often or usually hungry, or who lack
nourishment, have rights to more than
that. Good health, in all societies and
at all levels, begins at and before
birth. It is protected by exclusive
breastfeeding, freedom from incessant
infections and infestations, adequate
and varied food supplies, and reliable
sanitation and safe water. It is
sustained also by public goods such as
primary health care accessible to
everybody, universal basic education,
and the empowerment of people as
citizens.
Well-being also depends on freedom of
speech and assembly, secure and
rewarding employment, respect for
knowledge and beliefs based on
experience, upholding of individual,
family and community rights and
entitlements, and reliable and
accountable governance at all levels.
Future as well as present security also
requires protection of the natural and
managed resource base that is the source
of all food on land and at sea; and
perhaps above all, lives lived in hope
and in the reasonable expectation of
peace.
Some or even most of these rights and
needs are goals that are beyond the
reach of many populations. All the more
reason to recognise them, remember their
essential importance and relevance to
nutrition, and work to achieve them.
As individuals none of us can become
authorities on all the aspects and
implications of nutrition and public
health. Collectively, we can. This is
one purpose of the World Public Health
Nutrition Association.
The potential
Debates, commentary, challenges to
conventional wisdom – these are the
kinds of contribution that WN
will carry. It will support and
celebrate all that is best about modern
industrial and technological
development. It will include discussion
of the significance and implications of
discovery and thinking, such as those
now being made in the fields of
epigenetics and systems theory. WN
will also embrace the richness and
variety of human experience and culture.
It will pay attention to the points of
view of societies and communities, in
high-income as well as low-income
regions and countries, that are
impoverished or excluded, or that do not
equate development with more cash, or
whose ways of life are traditional.
The views expressed within WN are
not those of the Association, unless
this is explicitly stated. They are the
judgements and opinions of the authors,
who usually are Association members.
Contributions will always invite and
often will need responses, sometimes
from alternative or opposing points of
view.
WN is now making a modest
beginning. Initially it will include
just one commentary every month, usually
on a topic accepted as important to
world public health nutrition. Each
contribution will be accompanied by an
editorial that puts its topic in a broad
context. Responses to commentaries will
also be included within WN.
Authors will be profiled on this
website. Later we plan to add more
contributions. In time, if the
Association membership wants this, and
if a substantial number of members
become contributors,
World
Nutrition
may develop into a full-scale journal
complete with rapid response capability.
To achieve this we need more Association
members to join the editorial team and
to contribute. That’s up to you.
The
editorial board
Please cite as:
Anon. Manifesto. World Nutrition
May 2010, 1, 1: 1-4. Obtainable at: www.wphna.org
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