Nutrition Transition Model

Over the course of my food acquisition diary, I created a detailed summary of my diet including the kind of food that I ate, where it was purchased, where the ingredients were sourced from, and lastly, the amount of each food group serving that I consumed. Throughout this process, I began to compare and contrast aspects of my food sourcing habits and diet with populations that rely (or relied upon) hunting and gathering as methods of subsistence. Furthermore, I discovered and identified many healthy and unhealthy aspects of my diet and compared them to the consequences of relying upon hunting and gathering as methods of survival.

Firstly, one distinct difference from my diet and hunter-gatherer populations like the !Kung Bushman of Botswana
In the case of hunting and gathering societies like the Inuit or !Kung San hunters, a “great bulk of food supplies and other energy resources had to be obtained from the immediate local environment”, (Pelto et al., 1983: 354). In Barry Popkin’s Nutrition Transition model, these groups would be represented by the first stage: collecting food. The populations represented in this stage of Popkin’s nutritional framework are characterized by their hunting and gathering methods of subsistence. Since hunting in local wildlife is inconsistent, the groups like the !Kung San hunters have diets composed of 60% to 80% vegetation. Meat in these hunter-gatherer societies are usually considered as a special treat or a “break” from the monotony of vegetable foods (Richard, 1968: 43). For example, the !Kung San yield an average of 100 calories per hour on hunting meat, and 240 calories from gathering. This is primarily because the !Kung San have access to resources like the mongongo nut which are abundant, naturally occurring, and accounts for 50% of the !Kung San diet. Three-hundred mondongo nuts yield 1260 calories, 56 grams of protein and is equivalent in calories to 14 ounces of lean beef (Richard, 1968: 39). Therefore, it can be said that for the !Kung San population, meat is much more “costly” than food obtain from gathering and as a result, the !Kung San are known to have diets which are high in carbohydrates and fiber while being low in fats (Dufour et al., 2012: