From nutrients to food literacy

This paper is based on a webinar broadcast by the Home Economics Institute of Australia in 2015. I should make clear at the outset that I will be discussing the academic literature, particularly that relating to nutrition education and foodliteracy that reports studies with measured outcomes. This may seem ‘last century’ to many Australian home economics teachers who long ago moved from teaching about nutrients to education about dietary practices. However, in nutrition science there has long been a fascination with the possible effects of education about nutrition on disease risks and outcomes. There has been an expectation among health researchers and governments that education should reduce disease risks and promote wellbeing among young people. I think this view is too narrow and unrealistic in contrast to more holistic approaches such as those of home economics and the emerging area of food literacy. In this brief overview I will discuss four areas to dowith the emerging area of food literacy education. First, I will discuss the emergence of a broader view of food and dietary patterns in the nutrition sciences and the reasons for this. Secondly, I will explore the competing assumptions behind ‘education’ versus those of ‘health promotion’ and public health, followed by different disciplinary views of the emerging area of food literacy with its emphasis on competencies. Finally, I will explore some interesting new developments in food literacy education.

Home truths about home detention

The Victorian Parliament has recently introduced a Bill which implements home detention as a sentencing option. Home detention is an intuitively appealing reform. The logic behind the proposal seems obvious. Prisons are expensive to run. There are too many offenders in prison. So let's take the cost out of prison by turning the homes of offenders into prisons: classic, user-pays, cost-shifting economics. The level of superficial appeal of the argument in favour of home detention is matched only by the depth of the fallacies underpinning some of the fundamental premises. The most basic of which is the assumption that offenders who are candidates for the new sanction should be in detention (of any kind) in the first place. Further, the narrow objective of reducing imprisonment is misguided. It should not be elevated to a cardinal sentencing objective?otherwise total success could be achieved by simply opening the prison gates. There are also other concerns about the appropriateness of home detention. The degree of pain it inflicts in many cases is questionable and it may also violate the principle that punishment should not be inflicted on the innocent. After examining the arguments for and against home detention, this article suggests the approach that should be adopted to achieve enlightened and meaningful sentencing reform.