Abstract
This presentation highlights the urgent need to consider the influence of gendered social characteristics and roles when designing research into food systems and health, particularly research focusing on the impact of dietary choices on the incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCD) in low-middle income countries. Globalization of food webs, transnational media, and the increasing prevalence of multinational food conglomerates have contributed to significant dietary changes within low-middle income countries and related increases in obesity and epidemiologic changes. While often NCD progression is not contingent on biological-sex, social constructions of appropriate gendered behaviors, dietary choices, stigmas, and responsibilities, heighten disease-risk profiles for specific gendered groupings within wider populations. Based on a targeted review, literature was readily identified that considered linkages between food choices, obesity and NCD, and some of this literature provided sex-disaggregated data. However, what was not so evident was research that considered local social constructions of gender that resulted in vulnerabilities in food-system participation, or the origins in local gendered norms that contributed to diet-based NCD risk. The urgency of remedying this gap stems not only from data reporting that approximately 70% of the world’s malnourished are girls and women, but critically because food choices and advertisements, preparation tasks, and consumption priorities are gendered. Adopting a gender-lens from development of the research design allows exploration of nuanced causes of gendered dietary choice restrictions and influencers, and inequalities in differential NCD incidence among women and girls, men and boys.
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