The relationships between foods and public health, with special reference to the mycotoxin prone foods
I think that we need to consider the full opportunity that social protection even in modest scales can achieve if done in an appropriate manner.
The Peanut CRSP in collaboration with the Society for Sustainable Operational Strategy, and Beacon Foundation in Guyana has over the past 10 years fostered what we believe is a great example of achieving development, social protection, economic growth, nutrition, empowerment of women in a very remote region.
At he start of the project the Rupununi Region (20K people living in 20K sq.miles, 6 hours drive from the coast) schools were provided milk and biscuits transported from the coast for children but there was little use of this resource due to lactose intolerance. The region produced about 15 t of groundnut, and women had very little prospect of employment. The country imported 500 tonnes of peanut.
By improving production, persuading the Ministry of Education to replace the unused milk/biscuits feeding program with a locally provisioned peanut butter/cassava bread/fruit juice snack we now have improved nutrition, greater school attendance, a significant employment for women making peanut butter for the schools and local market. Farmers have a local market and are more competitive with imported groundnuts on the coast.
Tim Williams
This topic needs to be clarified.
What defines a traditional food preparation/process? I suggest that we consider processes that modify a major component of the diet, so storage of a grain would not but fermentation would, constitute a traditional food preparation.
Another question to focus the discussion is a definition of at what stage does a process cease to be traditional: since Pasteur canning has been a traditional presservation/preparation process, it is now a traditional practise that is still applied today at the industrial scale. As such it does not need special measures to preserve the knowledge.
Do we expanded the topic to include 'traditional' methods of preserving foods since food preservation is a critical part of achieving food security.
Do we consider preparations/process that influence the toxicological profile of a food? There are processes that either remove toxins from the ingredient - (rendering them a safe source of nutrition) or increase the contamination (particularly in the case of the mycotoxins).