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Background and Objectives: Health outcomes such as survival, minimal disability and well-being are presumptively dependent on food and ecosystems. An integral measure of the critical urban food system linkages to health problems is needed. Much of the current health change in cities could be attributed to short-comings in food systems which can pose threats to food security and food safety. Health problems have needed a reconceptualisation of present medical and nutritional constructs.Methods and Study Design: The present study is based on a situational analysis of food and the related ecosystems presumptively affected by rapid urbanisation in China. With an ecological information matrix, an Urban Food System Index with ten indicators which could influence food system outcomes and promote health and well-being has been developed. It uses sixteen data sets from the National Bureau of Statistics for all 31 provinces in China. The indicators were Locality, Climate, Biodiversity, Infrastructure, Transport, Population structure, Livelihood, Recreation and Socialisation, Personal security and Communication. The indicators for each province, scored between 1 (severe) and 5 (best), were used to predict life expectancy for China as a whole by multivariable regression analysis.Results: The best model explained 70% of the variance and had significant beta coefficients for population structure (proportion of juveniles) (-0.52, p<0.0001) and livelihood (food expenditure) (0.31, p<0.05).Conclusions: Population characteristics and livelihoods related to food systems can account for much of life expectancy as a health outcome. An index which captured this in-formation is provided and could evaluate concurrently as well as prospectively food system-related health with urbanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of its history, China has supported a growing population through food systems which have been mutually inclusive of people and their locality. This trajectory has required adequate ecosystem maintenance or humanised reformulation and a high degree of recyclable nutrient flow. The 'tipping point' in habitat sustainability has come with the size and demographic structure of China's population to one that is ageing, with modernisation of its infrastructure and increased expectations of better livelihoods, standards of living and health. In order to meet these expectations, China has embarked on rapid urbanisation for upwards of 300 million people over the next 15-20 years and to do so taking account of the environmental limitations. The process will radically change rural as well as urban China and the systems which connect them. Chief among these will be ecosystems in number and type along with the food and health systems integral to them. To minimise ecological damage and optimise the benefits to people and place, describing, monitoring and managing the process will be paramount. The present paper is a situational analysis of health as it may be ecologically favoured or disordered (Ecosystem Health Disorders) and of the food systems on which the environment and health depend. An effort is made to enumerate the current situation in China in a way that might enable the optimisation of humanised ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]