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This is a brief summary of the longer TABLE Explainer “What is the nutrition transition?” It aims to illuminate key debates surrounding the nutrition transition model.

Written by Trish Fisher

Summary: What is the nutrition transition?

The ‘nutrition transition’ is a model developed in 1993 by American academic Barry Popkin. It describes five sequential stages of diet, physical activity, and causes of disease that accompany changes in economic development, lifestyle, urbanisation, and demography, occurring in different places at different times:

  • Stage 1: Hunter-gatherer lifestyles
  • Stage 2: Early labour-intensive agriculture with periods of famine
  • Stage 3: Receding famine as agriculture becomes more industrialised and incomes rise
  • Stage 4: “Western”-style diets high in calories, sugar, animal fat, and processed foods, as well as sedentary lifestyles
  • Stage 5: Healthier diets and more active lifestyles

The term nutrition transition is commonly used by researchers to refer to the shift from Stage 3 to Stage 4, i.e. the switch from ‘traditional’ diets towards ‘Western’ diets high in fats, sugars, animal source foods, and highly processed foods, and low in fibre. This shift is associated with a reduction in diseases associated with insufficient access to nutritious foods, and also with increases in overnutrition, sedentary lifestyles, and diet-related non-communicable diseases.

Many countries in the Global North experienced the nutrition transition during the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In contrast, many countries in the Global South only experienced the nutrition transition in the 1980s and 1990s. Several factors are believed to drive the nutrition transition, including urbanisation, increases in average per capita income, the growth of supermarkets, market liberalisation, foreign direct investment, and food marketing.

 

Debates surrounding the nutrition transition
Conclusion
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Page 1 of the Nutrition Transition Summary
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Photo of a man running, centered on his feet on a dirt road.
PUBLISHED
04 Nov 2022