1. Introduction
Food isn’t just a neccessity : it’s one of our greater sources of pleasure like champagne,
chocolate and chips. All of these give your brain a “pleasure hit” that keep us coming back for
more. So, Food, sciences and technology have become more linked than ever.
But do you know the consequences of this pleasure?
So, let me explain you more about these consequences and some solutions to resolve it.
Mouth to Stomach
First of all, why food is a neccisity? Food provides us nutrients and energy. So, I’m going to
present you briefly the mechanism of the digestive system for obtaining it.
The mechanism works in stages. At first, it takes place in the mouth in which food is crushed
until is small enough to be swallowed. But the process begins earnest in the stomach and it’s
finished when the food passes through the intestines to the rectum. Our digestive system had a
lot of bacteria to help it digest the food.
Food and Health
However, despite the good functioning of the digestive system, Food may affect the health. In
fact, many people suffer from eating disorders. Some people suffer from food allergies and
must avoid some foods like wheat or peanuts for example or also suffer from food intolerance
whose the effects are slower to appear and longer lasting.
Moreover, one of the biggest health problems today is obesity. Thanks to a diet rich in fats
and sugars, many people are overweight and the risks are particularly severe for children
because it make them more prone to obesity later.
Nevertheless, the cause of obesity has been a source of controversy because the lack of
exercise may not be a factor. Several genes have been linked to obesity or also a virus that
causes fat cells to grow.
Therefore, this disease increases the risk of cancer, diabetes and early death.
Thus, many treatments for it have been developed like dieting but it’s rarely simple. For
example, there is the Atkins diet in which carbohydrate like starch and sugar are rejected in
favor of fat and protein. This really leads to weight loss. Or another alternative diet is
vegetarianism consisting in avoiding all meat products.
Finally, it exist more drastic measures than dieting like for instance hormone injections
cutting appetite, vaccine against addiction or anti-fat pill may also possible.
Feeding the World
Nowadays, food plays not only a role in health but also a role in the human evolution and
to feed the world. Some emerging countries such as China and India change their eating
habits because they get richer and we note also a huge increase in human population over the
last 200 years. So, the demand of protein gets stronger and lead to product more intensive and
reliant on technology. But this phenomenon has not been without cost:
- Soil quality has been damaged

2. - Some crops like banana have become less genetically diverse
- More and more rare breed of animal have been endangered
- Habitats have been destroyed
- An Increasing demand for meat also puts pressure on agriculture
- And finally, we observe food’s impact on the climate because 80 per cent of agricultural
emission comes from meat that represents 15 per cent of all greenhouse gas emission.
But many of the world’s poor need to increase their meat consumption to overcome malnutrition and
food insecurity. So, it’s unrealistic to stop the meat consumption but the solution is to eat less meat
rather than no meat.
Some solutions for these problems are genetic modification of crop plants to increase yield and make
them more resistant to disease but GM are unpopular with the public. Besides, Environmental damage
led to the development of sustainable techniques such as organic farming which produce adequate
amounts of food with less environmental damage.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude by highlighting the fact that today food is a great issue in different
fields: Eating a balanced diet and distributed food fairly in the world while minimizing
environment damage. So, currently the huge goal is to feed more than 9 billions persons in 2050.