Food, environment and climate change and how it is processed in the brain

Food, Environment and Climate Change and How it’s Processed in the Brain

By Njathi Kabui

Food, environment and climate change are important to each and every single creature living on this planet as it is the one thing that we all share together. Every living creature has to eat, it has to live somewhere and the climate affects both the availability and quality of food as well the comfort of the creatures living on earth. Climate change has been the cause of many floods, unpredictable rain patterns as well as extreme temperatures. This has led to major disruptions to communities leading to huge losses of life, destruction of food and property, disruption of industries and even drowning of whole cities. In other cases, such disruption has led to massive immigration due to climate change. Those migrations cause further disruptions in the affected communities where these immigrants end up by stressing the resources in those communities.

We can look at the importance of the three major issues from many angles, such as anthropological, looking at the disruption of cultures; economic, looking at the decline in economic output in particular societies: linguistically, by looking at how languages are affected by availability of food; peace and justice, looking at how the three factors affect the general global peace or justice. But we also look at the matter from the biological angle. When we look at the design of the human brain, the very nature of its composition combines the issue of food and justice in an interesting way. The part of the brain that deals with satiety or rather tells you that one is either hungry or has had enough to eat is called the insular cortex. That same section has only other important functions that scientists know of so far. The insular cortex is also the same section of the brain that deals with severely immoral issues. That means that food and justice are processed in the same part of the brain. Either we look at it, food, the environment and climate change are foundational in our very being and existence.