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If we are what we eat, it seems we are going through some sort of identity crisis. We eat out more often, where food tends to be less healthful, but we are hopeful that calorie labels and healthier menus will attenuate the effects of our habits and that improving the quality of food in our grocery stores will lead us to better purchases. We want our food to be safe, blemish-free, cheap, and available year-round. Our food production and distribution processes simultaneously generate waste and scarcity. We know our eating habits are leading to obesity and its attendant health consequences, but we are neither sure how to alter our consumption patterns nor sure we really want to.
It was a great pleasure to prepare Health Affairs' first-ever thematic issue on Food and Health. You might say we savored the task. The papers in this issue advance our understanding of the relationships between food and health.
OVERVIEW
Three papers set the stage for the discussion, addressing three elements of the relationship between food and health: diet, production, and food insecurity. Sara Bleich and colleagues note the growth in diet-related diseases and explore...