Kodoth Prabhakaran Nair - Food and Human Responses: A Holistic View

I was immensely pleased when I learnt that Professor Kodoth Prabhakaran Nair, nominated for the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize, chose to compile a manuscript for a book titledFood and Human Responses: A Holistic View. Professor Nair has spent over three decades working in Europe, Africa, and Asia. A senior Humboldt Fellow, he was the first and only Asian scientist named to the prestigious National Chair of the Science Foundation, The Royal Society, Belgium, following the development and presentation of a revolutionary soil management concept, now globally known as The Nutrient Buffer Power Concept, in the 6thInternational Colloquium for the Optimization of Plant Nutrition, held in Montpellier, France, in 1984. He headed the Departments of Agriculture, Soil Sciences, and Basic Sciences at the University Center, Republic of Cameroon, from 1983 to 1991 and was later invited as senior professor to the Republic of South Africa to help build a Faculty of Agriculture at the prestigious University of Fort Hare, Alice(alma mater of late Mr. Nelson Mandela, from where Mr. Mandela spearheaded the anti-apartheid struggle, when he was a law student in the University).

The book has 14 chapters covering a range of topics on important perspectives on food and health. Tracing the significance of food in many cultures, some of the chapters such as conceptual models in food-behavior relationships, nutrition-behavior interface and the way forward in research in this area, the brain-behavior link, the role of cholesterol in human health, examples of flagrant violations of the ethics code in dealing with food, the protein-energy malnutrition(PEM) among the poor of Africa, and the consequent diseases like kwashiorkor and marasmus, dietary supplements and their commercial exploitation, and finally the unethical treatment of food as a corporate target, are, indeed, illuminating. Professor Nair must be congratulated for his painstaking research, spanning more than 5 years, tenacity of purpose, and admirable scholarship in understanding these problems and as he rightly points out in the book the paradox of gluttony of the rich and the pity of hunger of the poor, coexisting among the rich-poor divide, even in countries like India, which is supposedly self-sufficient in food production, thanks to the highly soil extractive green revolution, though with its disastrous environmental fallout, especially on soil, which Professor Nair is attempting to mitigate through his revolutionary soil management technique. The Nutrient Buffer Power Concept, for which he recently received theSwadeshi Sastra Puraskar, of the Swadeshi Science Movement of the Government of India which is a forum to highlight and recognize admirable initiatives in science for the betterment of the country.

The book brings to light a hitherto superficially and inadequately discussed theme of food-behavior interface. While recommending the book to a global readership, I would particularly commend it to those scientists, students, and policy-makers who deal with food and nutrition issues of relevance to the community at large. I must congratulate Prof. Nair for his originality of thinking, tenacious research, comprehensive understanding, and, above all, commendable simplicity in explaining even the most complex concepts in free-flowing style. I wish the book much success.

I am pleased to learn that Dr. Nair, an internationally recognized agricultural scientist, has written a book titledFood and Human Responses: A Holistic View. The book has 14 chapters, covering a wide spectrum of subjects, ranging from food production changes to the perils of under- and overnutrition. The book will be useful to scientists, students, and professionals engaged in an area of nutrition and its behavioral impact.