Maternal & child nutrition
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Traditional knowledge and practice of Indigenous Peoples related to their food use and well-being is a wealth of information for academic study and for public health nutrition. Despite unique long-evolved heritages of knowledge of ecosystem resources, Indigenous Peoples comprise 15% of the global poor, but only 5% of the world's population, and they experience poverty, discrimination, and poor nutritional health at far greater rates than mainstream populations in their nations of residence. These disparities are unacceptable in all human rights frameworks, and the call to alleviate them resonates through all human development programmes and the United Nations organizations. ⋯ These factors structure the impact of gender roles with Indigenous worldviews on the dynamics of family food access, its availability and use, and the use of local food biodiversity. Cultures of Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador, Nigeria, Thailand, India, Canada, Japan, and Morocco are discussed. This publication is a work of the Task Force on Traditional, Indigenous and Cultural Food and Nutrition of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences.