Sustainability of functional foods Dissertation

Sustainability of functional foods - Dissertation Example As livestock industry being the single largest user of land is affecting the eco system directly or indirectly (directly by cultivation of crops for the animals on large areas and indirectly from feedstock productions). Moreover predictions were given earlier by Grigg (1995) regarding increase in environmental impacts because of more agriculture trading and global trends in the market with reference to food. Furthermore environmental impacts with reference to agriculture are analysed, fortified food or functional foods productions, then these are the findings: Almost one third of the world’s cultivated land over the time of forty years has resulted in soil erosions and degradation of land. One way or other almost 80% shedding of forest is because of agriculture (Pimentel, 1994) High consumption of water in the agriculture sector and in livestock production is another main environmental impact. For instance in some cases crops consume 500 to 2000 liters of water and in case of beef almost 150,000 to 200,000 water is consumed to produce it (Macdiarmid, et al., 2011) However in general live stock is mainly responsible for providing proteins to masses of today. According to a report in order to gain one kg of high quality meat 6 kg of high quality plant is required. ... Moreover the consumption of grain in US live stock industry is 7% more than what its population directly eats. This over production has caused lands to erode. So this is another important environmental factor with reference to function food productions (Frey, and Barrett, 2007). Moreover different researches have been carried out with reference to environmental impacts in which different input and output and extended research methods have been used. However meat along with dairy products is considered to be the main contributor in terms of impacting the environment which even includes production change and distributors (Macdiarmid, et al., 2011). According to the Swedish study, food consumption is one of the most important players in creating pollution. Beside pollution, another important concept which by Macdiarmid, et al., 2011 as â€Å"virtual water†. Or in other words it is the amount of water that is used in the production of food is known as virtual water or embedded wat er (Hoekstra, & Chapagain, 2008). Since water is a diminishing source of energy and it has no replacements unlike oil if that runs out then it can be replaced with other sources of energies. However the term virtual water or embedded water means that the water consumed by products during the time of creating product and that water is not present physically but it has consumed water is known as embedded water or virtual water for instance it takes 140 liters of water for making one cup of coffee and 15000 liters for 1kg of beef (Macdiarmid, et al., 2011) Likewise according to the statistic report shows that almost 12,000 billion liters of water is taken out from rivers and other sources in UK which is about 9% of the total actual renewable water available in the UK. Keeping in view