Food for Us

This chapter deals with artisanal fishers and fish as food for humans in a book about Brazilian reefs. In doing so, we reflect on the urgent need to realize that healthy eating is the right of all of us and that these fishers are responsible for bringing the fish to our tables. The conservation of coastal ecosystems depends on public policies that affect these traditional populations and sometimes cause socioeconomic and environmental imbalances. Regarding the reefs, such problems arise concerning fishing marine fish with great commercial value, such as lobsters and octopuses. However, the drastic reduction of fisheries resources and environmental pollution provoke a change of habit and risk to food security, seriously damaging human health. Contaminated by heavy metals and recently by oil, many organisms that form the trophic webs of the fish species become seriously ill or die, affecting human beings. The impoverishment of nature affects small-scale fishers and other peoples in the primary sector that directly depend on nature to thrive. With poor public management and disorderly growth, coastal peoples lose their fishing territories and fish, as they end up selling the catch to tourists and distant markets, with disadvantageous profits or no profit at all. Their families start consuming industrialized foods with high content of sodium, lipids, and carbohydrates. This diet may cause chronic diseases and nutritional deficiencies and replace a diet rich in proteins, unsaturated fatty acids, and vitamins found in fish. Food quality is directly linked to fisheries policy, marked by territorial conflicts and disrespect for environmental justice, and needs to be discussed in a multidisciplinary forum. We have found this book to be such a venue.