The purpose of this research paper is to discuss the dietary differences between the countries of India, Italy and the United States, to analyze the cultural factors that cause them and to assess the different health outcomes that result. Matters that might be taken into consideration are natural resources, agriculture, climate, religion, cultural traditions, general health or illnesses, lifestyle, eating habits, or any other factors.
One of the most interesting and visible ways in which men and women express their cultural differences is through the food that they eat or do not eat. Each human being has certain biological needs that must be met by the same nutrients as those required by all other people. Yet the foods that supply these nutrients are as different as the environments in which people exist and the cultures through which people have adapted to their environments.
While the consequences of food intake are biological, the nature of food intake - what people eat, how, when, where, and how much - is heavily influenced by social, economic, political, and cultural processes. From the assessment of nutrient distribution at the national level to analysis of nutrient distribution within communities and families, social variables are an integral part of nutritional outcomes.
Human nutrition is a subject that defies precise definition, and placing boundaries around the subject as a scientific discipline is difficult. Although knowledge of required nutrients and their occurrence in foods is central to the study of human nutrition, the social, economic, and cultural factors that are related to food practices determine the food consumed by populations and the ultimate nutritional well-being of individuals. The inevitable reciprocity between a human population and its environment necessarily involves human biology and the physical and psychosocial environments.
Given the cultural determinants of food habits, cer...