Abstract
Global events like pandemics or climatic changes have an important influence on food systems. Taking into account consumer requirements during the pandemic, nutrition and food safety are very significant for individuals' well-being. Lockdowns, quarantine, and social distancing changed daily routines as well as nutritional behaviors from shopping for food to eating habits. Direct transmission of coronavirus through food was not observed. Food safety and food sustainability are strongly affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the pandemic is still ongoing. For this reason, novel treatments of COVID-19 and immune-boosting food products will remain on-trend. Food loss and food waste should be avoided to achieve a sustainable food future. This chapter reveals a basis for the pandemic about the changes on nutritional behaviors, eating habits, and aimed to highlight the importance of food handling and food safety issues to create awareness. Future studies should investigate the sustainability, innovative technologies, mechanisms, and changes on nutritional behavior and food safety aspects during the pandemic.
TopNutrition And Health During The Covid-19 Pandemic
COVID-19 continues to affect the world. The novel virus has already infected more than 188 million people and caused over 4 million deaths until July 2021 (CSSE, 2021). Multiple vaccines were developed rapidly giving hope for controlling the outbreak. Vaccines introduce antigens into the body to create an immune response. Eight vaccines were approved up until June 2021 (Zimmer et al., 2021). COVID-19 has no borders, age, wealth, ethnicity, or indeed nationality. Immune response of vaccines may change according to the health status and nutrition types of populations. With the use novel technologies such as real-time vaccination, big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) and block chain technologies, attempts are made to manage the current pandemic and get prepared for any other possible future pandemics (Michie and West, 2021). Although there are several phase III trials, the authorities and scientific community are still trying to find out the treatment for the disease (Galanakis, 2020; Zimmer et al., 2021). There are several clinical trials of FDA approved medications on the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. These include azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine, tocilizumab, remdesivir, dipyridamole, and baricitinib. Beigel et al. (2020) found that remdesivir shortened the time of recovery from a median of 15 days to 11 days in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial leading to its FDA approval.
Besides clinical treatments, proper nutrition is very important for the immune system (Di Renzo et al., 2020a). Alternative nutrition types can be used in immune-boosting (Mcintosh et al., 1970). In the last decade, nutritional behaviors have changed to improve the immune system, physical and mental health. However, stress induced due to quarantine, lockdowns, social distancing and media news on COVID-19 affected individuals’ nutritional behaviors. In this context, stress led people to increase the consumption of food containing high fat and simple carbohydrates (Di Renzo et al., 2020a; Ammar et al., 2020; Martinez-Ferran et al., 2020; Haleem et al., 2020). These kind of food products increase serotonin secretion that reduce stress and lead to positive feelings e but also increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, and COVID-19 (Wu et al., 2020; Muscogiuri et al., 2020a).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Immune-Boosting Food Products: Food products that can boost immunity such as blueberries, turmeric, ginger, and broccoli.
Waste Management: Regulation of waste processes as inception, transportation, treatment, and disposal of waste.
Outbreak: An increased number of cases of a disease. It may affect several countries.
Hygiene: The processes of cleanliness that maintain health and prevent illnesses.
Food Supply Chain: All processes from raw food material to ready-to-consume food. Food supply chain can be divided into five stages namely, agricultural production, postharvest handling, processing, distribution/retail/service, and consumption.
Contamination: The presence of undesirable constituents that infect or spoil materials, the body, or the environment.
Food Safety: Methods of handling, preparation, and storage of food to prevent food-borne diseases and to promote good health.