Towards an understanding of a changing food system in Mauritius: A case study of rural and urban Mauritius

Nutrition transition is a phenomenon occurring throughout most of the developing world whereby traditional diets are increasingly being replaced by Western diets. In the literature, globalization is described as the main factor promoting such a transition. In adopting Western lifestyles, people abandon their traditional foods and adopt a Western diet which largely consists of energy-dense, nutritionally poor and highly processed foods. The nutrition transition, the underlying causes and its subsequent impacts on public health are well documented in the literature. However, there is a gap in the literature explaining the different ways in which the nutrition transition unfolds in the lives of people. Therefore this research project tries to document the lived experience of a changing food system in the Mauritian context. Mauritius has been selected as the study site because it is a microcosm of the casual factors driving the nutrition transition and also because the food system is rapidly changing. In 2008, the status of the country changed from being a net food exporter to a net food importer. A rural and urban site namely, Bambous Virieux and Tranquebar, Port-Louis have been selected to understand the different food geographies and to investigate the ways people in different locations experience a changing food system. By means of in-depth interviews, narratives and observation, the difference aspects of a changing food system is investigated. This study approaches the phenomenon of nutrition transition from the research participants’ lens.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Environmental and Geographical Science

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Appavoo Moodelly, Sandra

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Battersby-Lennard, Jane

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12817

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12817