Food Bytes: October 2023 Edition

FOOD BYTES IS A (ALMOST) MONTHLY BLOG POST OF “NIBBLES” ON ALL THINGS CLIMATE, FOOD, NUTRITION SCIENCE, POLICY, AND CULTURE.

It is hard to find the time to read, let alone write about what you read. One of the things about reading scientific literature is that you have to weed through many journals’ tables of contents to find the nibbles and nuggets that are worth your time. Sometimes, you get lucky and find some gems; other times, you don’t get further than the abstract. Regardless, if you don’t have LinkedIn or X, spoon-feeding your biased and “like-minded lemur” content, the never-ending search for quality papers is laborious and time-consuming.

Enter documentaries and podcasts. I find myself more and more listening to them to get a synthesis of a topic or a deep dive into an issue or scientific discovery. There is no shortage of food podcasts, but most focus on cooking and gourmandery. But a few goodies discuss the politics of food and the history of food. I try to add them to the Resource section of The Food Archive. I found this particular episode of the podcast, “What You’re Eating,” fantastic on the confusion of egg labels. The host lays out the issues and clarifies where your eggs come from and how to understand the labels on those confusing cartons better.

Two food documentaries worth the watch are Poisoned and How to Live to 100, Wherever You Are in the World. Let’s take Poisoned first, about how “unsafe” the U.S. food supply is, although often touted as being one of the most secure. The documentary starts with the contaminated burgers from Jack in the Box, which killed and sickened a slew of people. After lawsuits and regulations, getting sick from E. coli-contaminated hamburger meat is hard now. It shows that it works once governments can set their mind to something and put in strict and enforced regulations. Enter vegetables. After watching the show, I am not sure I will ever eat romaine lettuce again…much of it is grown right next to concentrated animal feed operations (where beef is raised in the U.S.). The manure runs off into waterways,  and the water from those said waterways irrigates the nearby lettuce crops. And then bingo! You’ve got severe contamination issues. It is worth watching to understand how food is produced in this country, how it is regulated, and how you can be safer with food in your kitchen.

How to Live to 100 is hosted by Dan Buettner, who wrote Secrets of the Blue Zones. He has been studying why, in some places, people live such long lives – sometimes beyond 100 years. He travels to Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California — where more people live significantly longer than average. He summarizes some of their secrets to longevity into four basic mantras. Keep in mind these populations all get to their winter years in different, contextualized ways, and it is never that straightforward why someone lives a long life and others die too early. Dan argues these four lifestyle changes help:

• Make movement a habit

• Have a positive outlook

• Eat wisely

• Find and connect with your tribe

There are a lot of valuable lessons in this documentary (sans Dan showing himself riding his bike for 1/3 of the docuseries. Why do documentarians always have to show themselves so much? I digress…). One lesson is that no matter how long you live, you can live your best life and one of high quality. A lot of that centers around food. And wine. Yay!

The NY Times Magazine had two fantastic articles last week. David Wallace-Wells wrote a piece on the financial responsibility for climate change and how difficult it is to figure out the historical tally of damage. The price of historical emissions and removing carbon would cost $250 trillion. The U.S. alone has accrued a climate debt of $2 trillion. By 2100, $100 trillion. This shows how daunting it will be to turn around the damage we have done and will continue to do without serious action on climate change.

Another NY Times Magazine article focuses on young migrant kids from Central America who work night shifts in slaughterhouses – a dangerous, low-paying job – with very little compensation or legal status. They are often too tired when they get to school after working long, laborious hours all night, and often, they get maimed, injured, or exposed to terrible toxins that stay with them for a lifetime. It is a tragic story but so important to read to understand why younger kids and teens are trekking up to the U.S., what they face along the way and when they get here, and the fine line to ensuring their freedom. While it seems we have come a long way from the days of The Jungle, written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair of the Chicago slaughterhouses, this article makes you pause. Your heart will break for Marcos Cux.

And for some self-promotion, my team and colleagues published a few papers in the last six months that may be of interest to Food Archive readers:

• Challenges and opportunities for increasing the effectiveness of food reformulation and fortification to improve dietary and nutrition outcomes: This article is about how reformulation and fortification face numerous technical and political hurdles for food manufacturers and will not solve the issues of increased consumption of ultra-processed foods. You can’t make junk food healthier at the end of the day…

• Harnessing the connectivity of climate change, food systems, and diets: Taking action to improve human and planetary health: This paper presents how climate change is connected to food systems and how dietary trends and foods consumed worldwide impact human health, climate change, and environmental degradation. It also highlights how specific food policies and actions related to dietary transitions can contribute to climate adaptation and mitigation responses and, at the same time, improve human and planetary health. While there is significant urgency in acting, it is also critical to move beyond the political inertia and bridge the separatism of food systems and climate change agendas currently existing among governments and private sector actors. The window is closing and closing fast.

• A global view of aquaculture policy: This article shows that government policies have strongly influenced the geographic distribution of aquaculture growth, as well as the types of species, technology, management practices, and infrastructure adopted in different locations. Six countries/regions are highlighted – The EU, Bangladesh, Zambia, Chile, China, USA, and Norway. These case studies shed light on aquaculture policies aimed at economic development, aquaculture disease management, siting, environmental performance, and trade protection. 

• Riverine food environments and food security: a case study of the Mekong River, Cambodia: Rivers are critical, but often overlooked, parts of food systems. They have multiple functions supporting the surrounding communities' food security, nutrition, health, and livelihoods. However, given current unsustainable food system practices, damming, and climate change, most of the world’s largest rivers are increasingly susceptible to environmental degradation, with negative implications for the communities that rely on them. Rivers are dynamic and multifaceted food environments (i.e., the place within food systems where people obtain their food) and their role in securing food security, including improved diets and overall health.

Barriers to a just, sustainable dietary transition

As world leaders meet to discuss grand global challenges, like climate change, over champagne cocktails this week here in NY, my friend and colleague, Chris Barrett and company asked to write about what I think are the main barriers or challenges to a just, sustainable dietary transition. Hmmmm. Where to even start?

The overarching major challenge is the inequities in the ability of many people to access (physically, economically, and socially) what is considered healthy, safe, and sustainable diets. Ironically, many of these same people are the food producers for the world. Accessing these diets and adapting will only get more complex if we stay on a business-as-usual course in the context of climate mitigation and adapting to climate-related extreme weather events.

There are many reasons for this lack of access that could cut across inefficiencies across food supply and environments and demands for specific kinds of food that put the world on a dangerous course. However, there are a few barriers that I would like to highlight. This summary focuses on food systems. However, many systems and sectors are responsible for meeting this goal, such as health, economics, education, and urban/rural development.

The first challenge is unrealistic goal and recommendation setting. Goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals provide a universal road map for how we want the world to be in seven years. Still, not every goal is relevant, meaningful, or a priority for every country. Recommendations for food system transformation are often made as generalities, not articulating who is responsible, for what, and by when. They also do not indicate how these recommendations can be translated into action ‘on the ground’ in the context of established interests and constrained budgets.

The second challenge is data gaps. High-quality analytical methods and tools to collate, curate, and analyze data across food systems; integration of data sets across disciplines; and new empirical research to solve the grand challenge of sustainable development (Fanzo et al., 2020). These data gaps bring about difficulties in navigating unintended consequences or trade-offs. While there are many gaps across food systems science, I focus on diets here.

We remain unclear on what people consume, why, and their barriers to accessing healthy, sustainable diets. Global dietary intake data that are nationally and subnationally representative remain sparse. Most countries do not consistently and systematically collect individual dietary intake data, and the existing data are often based on models relying on household expenditure and consumption survey data, food balance sheet data, or data from subpopulation nutrition surveys. Although these modeled estimates may give us a sense of dietary intake and patterns of consumption, they are an uncertain substitute for robust, representative individual dietary intake data reflecting recent consumption patterns at a national level, particularly in low- and middle-income contexts. Collecting robust longitudinal dietary data would allow researchers and policymakers to understand better how diets change over time and why.

The third challenge is the politics across food systems governance. As one example, the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and its stock take in July 2023 is not without uncertainties and controversies, with rumblings of it all being grandiose political wonk talk. With summits, there are always questions about impact. Will all stakeholders be included? Will the needs of the vulnerable and marginalized be prioritized? Will there be a sense of urgency to scale up investment? Will there be any accountability mechanism to track commitments and hold those to account who fall behind? If this is the mechanism for food systems change and for governments to engage, these questions are critical to understand and act on.

While addressing effective governance is a sticky issue, more and more, we as researchers must engage in this space if we are to see evidence come to bear in policy- and decision-making.

Building Stronger Food Systems in the Face of Global Shocks

I recently wrote a report for the Farm Journal Foundation on the current global food system crisis and the U.S.'s role in supporting small-scale producers by ramping up agricultural development assistance. A summary is below, and the full report can be found here.

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Over the past few years, the world has faced a series of unprecedented shocks that have pushed farmers and our global food system to the breaking point. The COVID-19 pandemic, international and regional conflicts, including the war between Russia and Ukraine, and extreme weather events caused by climate change have come together to create a true “polycrisis” – significantly impacting food, fertilizer, feed, fuel, and finance available to farmers. These challenges have been extremely difficult in their own right, but worst still, they have left humanity vulnerable to any future “black swan” moments that could have severe and far-reaching consequences for global food supplies.

Recent shocks have led to high food prices and worsening hunger and malnutrition around the world. This polycrisis has disproportionately negatively impacted small-scale producers and people living in low-income, food-deficit countries who spend most of their incomes on food. Smallholders generally have low levels of agricultural productivity, high exposure to climate change and other threats, scarce assets, and poor access to information, technology, markets, and services – increasing their vulnerability to shocks.

Because Russia and Ukraine are major crop producers and fertilizer suppliers, a key input to help smallholder farmers increase their crop yields, the war between the two countries has significantly impacted global food and nutrition security. Trade bottlenecks, initially caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but compounded by the Russia-Ukraine war, have further exacerbated the crisis. Structural challenges to food systems in developing countries, including farmers’ lack of access to markets and finance, poor storage and transportation infrastructure, which contribute to food loss and waste, and persistent disempowerment of women in agriculture, mean that countless farmers and food producers were already teetering on the edge of survival; additional burdens stemming from the polycrisis have pushed many into disaster. Consumers around the world have also faced enormous pressure, as disrupted agricultural supplies have led to rising food prices and lower availability and affordability of nutritious foods. New research has shown that even modest increases in the prices of staple foods leads rapidly to negative nutrition impacts from deteriorating diet quality as low-income families shift away from more nutritious and expensive foods, including vegetables, fish, and eggs, in order to afford the increased costs of rice, wheat, maize, or other dietary staples.

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A global map of the number of people with acute food insecurity, mid-2022

Through its whole-of-government Feed the Future initiative, the U.S. has an important role in enabling farmers and food systems in developing countries to withstand shocks better. Supporting global food and nutrition security is in America’s best interest both from an economic and national security standpoint. Studies show that U.S. investment in international agricultural development, research, and innovation benefits both developing countries and U.S. producers and consumers, far exceeding its costs.

Key Recommendations

Agricultural research and development (R&D) can help developing countries address their own unique challenges and shore up local food systems to withstand shocks better. Unfortunately, there have been significant decreases in inflation-adjusted U.S. and multilateral investment in food systems R&D to countries and universities in recent years, and important institutions, including CGIAR have seen fluctuations in research funding.

The U.S. government is uniquely positioned to lead investments in international agricultural research by virtue of its unparalleled capacity from the federal, university, private sectors and to generate benefits that would simultaneously help smallholder farm families around the world and American farmers and ranchers. The U.S. can strengthen its portfolio by providing additional resources to initiatives such as CGIAR, U.S. Feed the Future Innovation Labs, and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), and by partnering with institutions with long histories of designing and delivering research for development overseas, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Within this context, the U.S. should consider targeting additional research funding toward the following areas to increase impact:

1. Climate change adaptation and mitigation: The impact of climate change on agriculture is expected to intensify in coming years, and more investments are needed to improve smallholder resilience, productivity, and incomes. Areas that need increased research investment include drought-resistant crop varieties, better on-farm water management and improved irrigation, more precise fertilizer application, and additives to cattle feed to improve feed efficiency and/or reduce enteric methane emissions.

2. Soil health and nutrient management: More research is needed into solutions that can reduce global dependence on Russian fertilizer. The U.S. should consider investing in R&D and partnering with the private sector to develop and scale up green fertilizer, biofertilizers, fertilizer alternatives, and innovations that boost fertilizer efficiency and nutrient uptake.

3. Crop diversity and nutrition: Low productivity, high production risks, and insufficient diversification towards producing more nutritious foods are critical drivers of the elevated cost of healthy diets, especially in low-income countries. More research should focus on developing sustainable and scalable production methods for various crops, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, improved forages for climate-smart animal nutrition, and where appropriate, biofortification and fortification of crops and food. In addition, more research is needed to improve the affordability of animal-source foods, such as fish, eggs, and dairy, that would enhance both nutrition and livelihoods.

4. Access to markets and finance, especially for women: Research could focus on how to address barriers to smallholders’ access to credit and market information, ways to develop new market linkages, innovative financing models, and partnerships with development banks to expand lending to farmers, and how to improve farmer organizations’ capacity to negotiate with buyers.

5. Supply chain infrastructure: Inadequate food storage, poor road infrastructure, limited food preservation capacity, and the lack of physical access to food markets, especially for perishable foods, lead to significant food losses and inefficiencies along supply chains in many developing countries. Innovations focused on the infrastructure needs of small-scale producers and strategies developed to address those needs could help attract additional investment on-farm and across the entire food system.

6. Local capacity building: Giving voice and agency to local producers allows for their participation and leadership in R&D funding and prioritization decisions. Without their engagement from the start, adoption of technologies and other R&D tools produced could be futile. It is also critical to ensure that R&D investments do not cause unintended negative consequences, burdens, or harms, particularly for women who already face significant hurdles.

No place else is good enough

In John Steinbeck’s 1953 essay, The Making of a New Yorker, he wrote: “New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it – once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.”

I have traveled to over 60 countries, visited just about every state in the United States, and lived in 9 of them – 4 in the near corners of the country (Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, Washington), and moved 25 times since meeting my partner 30 years ago. It is reasonable to assume I have seen my fair share of people, places, and landscapes. Yet, still, New York is good enough, at least for me. It is always in flux—changing, gentrifying, molding in both ambitious and merciless ways. The constant liquescency and, at the same time, the unyielding character of the city is home.

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Having been here for almost a month now, it isn’t the same city as when we first moved here in early 2000. It isn’t necessarily better or worse. It metamorphosed in some ways and remains utterly unvarying in other ways. Watching the documentary, Meet Me in the Bathroom, about the early naught NY resurging music scene, takes me back to my younger self, when we saw a ton of live music, ate out probably way too much, and took in everything we could.

This second go-around will be a bit different, I suspect. I think, and hope, we will be here a good long while (I don’t want to move for the 26th time). New York will be where we occupy our 50s and 60s. I have elaborate plans to be the quiet academic, the routine professor. I want to frequent my neighborhood restaurants and bars “where everybody knows your name…” Days will consist of stellar meals and drinks (we already had some delicious meals near our apartment, like Sushi W, Ortomare, Osteria 106, Calaveras, Rosies, and Flor de Mayo – nothing that requires booking months in advance…), books, movies, live music, and lots of walks.

We are starting our Maphattan* project again – in which we walk every city street of Gotham. A decade has passed, and we won’t do too much research this time. It will be more zen: reflecting and flaneuring with some tentacles into the other 4 lovely boroughs. To kick it off, we did a 9.5 miler today in our own hood: 98th to 109th Street on the west side.

*Our Maphattan Project is named after the Manhattan Project established by Oppenheimer, who lived in our hood on 155 Riverside Drive.

The town that we could call our own

Preface: To hear the deep cultural history of DC, I highly suggest listening to The Atlantic’s Holy Week podcast — a story about the week following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968, and the seven days of heartbreak and revolution, much of it centered in DC.

After eight years (well, technically six and half years, but more on that later) living in DC, we are heading back to New York. In 2015, I was wooed to leave New York and Columbia University to take on a tenured, chaired professorship—as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Food Policy and Ethics—at Johns Hopkins University. I split my time between Baltimore and DC, with appointments at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, the School of Advanced International Studies, also known as “SAIS,” and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. I started the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program and built and mentored a strong team of food system scientists. Amid those eight years, 1.5 were spent in Italy – one year as a nutrition policy program officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and another at SAIS’ Europe campus in Bologna. I also took a sabbatical and wrote the first draft of my hippie food book (more to come on that!). I cannot even begin to describe how pivotal these years at Hopkins have been for my career and those I had the privilege to mentor and work with.

But Columbia and, more so, New York City are calling me back. Starting July 1, I will be a Professor of Climate at Columbia University’s new climate school, the first in the country. I will also lead their Food for Humanity Initiative. I am looking forward to my 4th stint at Columbia. Yes, 4th. The first time was as a postdoc fellow in the Molecular Medicine Department of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The second was with Jeffrey Sachs at the Earth Institute, leading nutrition work. The third was as an assistant professor at the Institute of Human Nutrition and the School of International and Public Affairs, aka “SIPA.” So, I guess my home is Columbia or, at least, where I continue to feel grounded.

Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library and “Low beach.”

I am looking forward to living in Gotham again. DC has been a fine place to dwell, but nothing that I felt would be our long-term home. Sure, you have free-entry Smithsonian museums, many memorials dedicated to the US wars (if you are into that sort of thing), and two rivers surrounding it. But, still, to me, DC is a suburban-oriented town that is culturally vacant. What I think I will miss most is the greenery, book boxes, birds, and Rock Creek Park. It is clean, but I would not necessarily say it is any safer than NYC at the moment.

I won’t miss the unfettered, careless gentrification of historic neighborhoods, so much so that you cannot distinguish parts of the city from other American towns like Atlanta, Philly, or Baltimore all that much. DC has become a city full of Sweetgreens (you know, the place that sells $13 salads) and Tatte Bakeries. Likewise, NYC has gentrified, and the old-school feel of the city has diminished. That said, when you are in NYC, you know it, and there are still plenty of unique places that are quintessential to Gotham. It just doesn’t seem so brutally gentrified, but maybe I’m biased.

Gotham

I will not long for the insanely expensive and the not-at-all-worth-it restaurant scene in DC. You either spend $200 on dinner for two or dine at a fast-casual place like the aforementioned Sweetgreens or Starbucks. NYC has a range of eateries to satisfy all tastes and wallets. Of course, you can spend even more than $200 on dinner in Gotham, but you can also score some real-deal delish dumplings, scrumptious sushi, or hand-rolled badass bagels for cheap. You just need to know where to go. I can’t wait to walk into a back-in-the-day diner (yes, they still exist), sit at the counter, and order a grilled cheese sandwich and a hot cup of coffee, private eye style. All for under ten bucks. I look forward to frequenting Hasaki or Takahachi in the east village, Lupes LA style burritos in Soho, the dumplings at Shu Jiao Fu Zhou, and the pizza. My god, the pizza.

Tom’s diner

I will appreciate seeing live music with more than five people in the audience (so sad for bands!) and grooving with like-minded lemurs as opposed to a strange mix of randomers, some just coming from work with World Bank badges hanging around their necks. At least take the goddamn badge off for chrissakes. It’s okay not to be networking all the time…

Moments to look forward to, like hanging out with friends in dive bars with a jukebox and ordering a beer instead of frequenting some douchey bar where cocktails are $20. Of course, NYC is also abundant in douchebaggery up to your knees, but you have more options to escape to the said dive bars and delicatessen, and I am yet to find a cool dive bar or old-school diner in DC.

Mo’s - dive bar in Brooklyn

I will relish walking the vast cityscape without fear of being hit by a car. And for the record, while DC is a bikable town, cars rule, and those cars seem to have a habit of running red lights. In NYC, pedestrians dominate. Plus, walking 6 or 7 miles in DC is like drudgery because everything looks the same. Lots o’ suburbs. It lacks eye candy to keep you preoccupied as you ramble.

I will love the true diversity that NY offers around you in its cultures and peoples, 24-7. Sure, DC is diverse, but everyone is either a politician, a policy analyst, a government contractor, or working for an NGO. Because it is a city of great political power, the whole area of the DMV feeds off that government infrastructure. The first question someone asks you when they meet you is, “What do you do/where do you work?” It is a pretty buttoned-up place. Pearls and pinstripes. Khakis after dark. You get the picture. It just doesn’t have the cultural cache. One of my students gave an apropos comparison between Miami and DC. She said: “In Miami, everyone who is 75 wants to be 25, and in DC, everyone 25 wants to be 75.” Too true.

I guess I just never felt like I belonged in DC. I miss who we were and the place, the town that we could call our own. I know everything will be different, and we, too, have changed. But change is good. I am not saying NYC doesn’t have its problems. Unfortunately, it does, especially right now. Rats, homeless populations, unsafe subways, and grime. But I love the grit. I love the jenk. It’s my kinda town. I can’t wait to go back home.

Food Bytes: March 2023 Edition

FOOD BYTES IS A (Almost) MONTHLY BLOG POST OF “NIBBLES” ON ALL THINGS CLIMATE, FOOD, NUTRITION SCIENCE, POLICY, AND CULTURE.

So much going on in food and nutrition these days that it is hard to keep up. In looking at what has been published in the last month, three areas dominate ultra-processed foods, climate change, and blue foods. Let’s take each and highlight the latest and the greatest.

Ultra-processed foods: What are ultra-processed foods (UPFs), may you ask? Basically, junk food. But we scientists have to come up with fancy terms and categorize everything. UPFs are a very broad category of foods that generally are made from highly processed, industrialized ingredients not found in the home or in restaurant kitchens. These foods are designed to be hyper-palatable, often conveniently ready-to-eat, shelf-stable, transportable, strongly marketed, and, ultimately, highly profitable. More and more research shows that these foods are detrimental to various health outcomes (obesity, diabetes, cancer, morbidity, mental health, etc.) and could be potentially addictive and environmentally destructive. California, which always leads in food governance (blame it on the hippies), is growing worried about what exactly these foods contain. They are considering banning a number of staple ingredients found in these foods. I cannot even begin to source the sheer amount of literature coming out demonstrating the impact of these devilish foods, but here, here, and here are a few good systematic or meta-reviews. This Wired layperson article is a good summary. If you want to read two people who lead in the science of UPFs, read Carlo Montiero or Kevin Hall. Regardless of all the science coming out, their sales are increasing across almost every region of the world. Why? Well, they are cheap, have a long shelf life, are easily stored and transported for long periods of time, and are damn tasty.

IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report, 2023: Key Summary Figure

Climate and food: Hard too to keep up with everything going on. The most significant update is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also known as the IPCC, has come out with a synthesis report on how much time we have left before the world falls apart. They are surprisingly and cautiously optimistic, arguing that there is still time to address climate change before things start “gettin’ hot in here.” Food is heavily featured in this synthesis report, thanks to our AgMIP friends at Columbia University. They argue that food security and nutrition are and will continue to be significantly impacted, particularly in resource-constrained settings and among smallholder farmers. They also offer a range of mitigation and adaptation strategies, including agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) options with reduced deforestation in tropical regions, shifting to sustainable healthy diets, reducing food loss/waste and intensifying sustainable agriculture (they even mention urban ag!).

When I asked Google’s new AI system, Bard, what was the latest science published in “food systems” in the last week, this is what they spit out:

Here are some recent research on food systems:

• A new study found that the global food system is responsible for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published in the journal Nature, found that the food system's emissions are mainly caused by the production of meat and dairy products, as well as the transportation of food.

• A new study found that the global food system is also responsible for about one-third of all water use. The study, published in the journal Nature Water, found that the food system's water use is mainly caused by the irrigation of crops, as well as the production of meat and dairy products.

• A new study found that the global food system is also responsible for about one-third of all land use. The study, published in the journal Nature Land, found that the food system's land use is mainly caused by the production of crops, as well as the grazing of livestock.

These are just a few of the recent research on the global food system's impacts on the environment. The food system is a major contributor to climate change, water pollution, and land degradation. These impacts are likely to become more severe in the coming years, as the global population continues to grow.

Not too shabby, but a bit outdated (and they don’t provide any citations). Interesting how AI is set to become such a game-changer, and yet, as an expert, asking Bard to do a bit of research, it is pretty generic and lacks scientific nuance, which can be dangerous…Here are some even more recent papers out this week on food systems and climate from a flawed human perspective:

• Ivanovich and colleagues at Columbia University (see a pattern?) published a paper in Nature showing that if we continue on our current food consumption patterns, this will add 1 °C to an already warm planet by 2100. Most of this warming is driven by what is called high methane foods (methane is another toxic greenhouse gas) like livestock, dairy, and rice (yes, we cannot blame it all on those cute cow creatures). If we made some of the changes mentioned in the IPCC report above, we could cut 55% of that warming.

• Another paper, again published by Columbia University peeps (they are on a roll), called for more studies to better show how the food security of households and communities is impacted by climate-related shocks. They argue that most studies only examine food production and availability, not access or utilization.

• And last, and this is self-promotional, a few of us put together an analysis trying to understand if the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet was adequate in nutrients (we didn’t look at environmental impacts or other health impacts, and we are not suggesting to do so). This particular analysis shows that the diet is inadequate in vitamin B12, calcium, iron, and zinc. The EAT-Lancet may not be happy with these results but this is what science is all about — debating on a level playing field, DISproving one’s hypotheses, and not being wed to ideologies. I am not sure right now that everyone at the so-called proverbial table looks at science similarly and instead holds fast to their worldviews, which worries me. But a lot is at “steak.” The EAT-Lancet Commission part has been downloaded over 6,000 times in 4 years. That is pretty insane. So to go against that, dissect it, calls to do it better next time around, or at least look carefully at the data, in which multiple people analyzing the dataset, is, well, what science and the pursuit of truth is all about. But putting one’s arm out to be potentially severed. Bottom line: This paper is about the trade-offs that are par for the course with a grand food systems transformation.

Showing tradeo-offs of policy bundles: Crona et al Nature 2023.

Blue foods: More and more, and this is long overdue, blue foods, aka seafood, aka aquatic foods, are getting more attention. The Blue Foods Assessment highlighted their importance from multiple angles - important contributors to a nutritious diet, some species’ environmental sustainability, their risk of climate threats, and contributors to livelihoods. Some fantastic articles have emerged recently, including a fantastic paper by Christina Hicks and colleagues examining the injustices associated with aquatic food systems. Another paper summarized the BFA around 4 policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints, and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. However, trade-offs always exist, just as above. The figure shows these — the question is, what trade-offs are we willing to live with? And last, on blue foods, the great Roz Naylor at Stanford published a policy landscape paper in Food Policy (thanks, Chris Barrett!) on aquaculture. I had the pleasure of working with her on this. Through a series of case studies, she presents a state-of-play on how aquaculture is playing out globally, and again, where those policy priorities elicit trade-offs that can be detrimental to the environment or nutrition. Check it out.

Diversifying Our Diets, Post COP 15

This is a cross-posted blog from the Berman Institute of Bioethics’s Global Food Policy and Ethics (GFEPP) blog. It was written by Leslie Engel, MPH, a Science Writer Consultant for the GFEPP.

COP 15—shorthand for the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity—wrapped up in late December with ambitious goals to address the rapid and stunning losses to our natural world. Included within the targets for 2030 is the conservation of 30% of the world’s land, oceans, and waterways; a 50% reduction in food waste, and a “significant” curtailment in overconsumption and waste generation.

The critical role food systems play in meeting these targets was acknowledged during Food Day, a mini-conference within the two-week convening. The day was devoted to discussions on “transforming food systems to address biodiversity loss and achieve food security and nutrition for all by 2030.” As the organizers noted, “food production is the biggest driver of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss: 70% of freshwater withdrawn, 30% of global GHG emissions, 80% of deforestation and the degradation of many other precious habitats such as wetlands and grasslands.”

In the U.S., recent events have underscored how intensive agricultural practices and climate change are interacting to create a troubling feedback loop with dire environmental consequences. A severe drought, coupled with overuse, has reduced the Colorado River to a trickle in places. Americans rely heavily on the river, with one in 10 depending on it for drinking water. The rest of us are making salads with it: 70% of the Colorado River Basin is used for agriculture and over 90% of our winter vegetables are grown in Arizona. 

And we are not the only species relying on it. The river that carved the Grand Canyon also sustains life for a huge variety of unique creatures and ecosystems that will disappear without it. A manager at Glen Canyon Dam described it as a “doomsday scenario” in a recent Washington Post article. 

California’s Central Valley, where 25% of our food is grown, is experiencing similar conditions, the January deluge notwithstanding.

Let’s pause here for a deep breath.

It’s heartening that the international community was able to come to a consensus on protecting the world’s ecosystems. How do we translate the momentum generated in distant conference rooms to our everyday lives?

Here’s one idea: this year, let’s step out of our culinary comfort zones. 

Seventy-five percent of the world's food comes from only 12 plant and five animal species. It’s a startling statistic but think about that salad you ate for lunch. Was it so different from the one you had yesterday, last month or last spring? We can support the environment, our personal health and ultimately, a more sustainable future by diversifying our own palates. 

To jumpstart, here’s a veggie-centered recipe, sans lettuce, the leafy green that science journalist Tamar Haspel once described as a “vehicle to transport refrigerated water from farm to table.” Instead, this colorful and low-waste winter salad features nutrient-rich, cool-weather crops that you may be able to source locally or regionally, including:

• Radicchio, native to Northeast Italy and currently grown in similar climates within the U.S throughout the winter months.

• Millet, a highly nutritious and drought-resistant cereal grain that you’ll be hearing more about. The FAO has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets to draw attention to the potential of this small but mighty grain to feed the world in the face of climate change. 

• Winter squash, a great two-for-one deal since you get the flesh and the seeds as a future snack. Keep the veggie peeler in the drawer; squash skin is edible.

• Hazelnuts (aka filberts), which are less intensive to grow than other nuts. If possible, use hazelnuts grown in Oregon. 

• Citrus, currently in season

Radicchio, Millet and Roasted Winter Squash Salad with Hazelnuts and Orange Vinaigrette
Serves 4 generously/Costs approx. $3 per serving (based on current food prices in a New York City)

• 1 medium winter squash (about 2 lbs.): delicata, kabocha, buttercup, almost any type will do, except spaghetti.

• 1 cup millet

• ½ lb. radicchio (of any variety), torn into bite-sized pieces

• 2 large navel oranges: use one for zesting and juicing, and the other for the salad.
  I used cara cara oranges here for their lovely pink hue, but any navel-type orange works.

  • 1 tsp orange zest (zest the orange before squeezing it)

  • ¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice 

• ½ cup raw hazelnuts

• Olive oil

• Optional soft herbs like parsley, mint, tarragon or chives (a great way to use up any herbs you may have lurking in your fridge)

Roast Squash

Arrange racks in the middle and bottom sections of the oven. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cut squash in half and scoop out the seeds (save for roasting!). Slice squash into one-inch pieces, place on a rimmed baking sheet, drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast on top rack 25-30 minutes until caramelized and tender. Flip squash halfway through cook time to ensure even roasting.

Prepare Millet
Meanwhile, add millet to a medium saucepan over medium heat. Toast millet 4-5 minutes until slightly golden and fragrant. Carefully pour in 2 cups of water, 1 tbsp. olive oil and ½ tsp. salt. Stir everything and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until tender, about 15 minutes. Allow to steam for five minutes with the lid on, then fluff with a fork. Spread on a sheet pan or plate to cool. This last step is optional but prevents the grains from sticking together too much. Adapted from thekitchn.

Toast nuts

Place hazelnuts on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast on bottom oven rack for 7-10 minutes, shaking pan once, until nuts are lightly browned and fragrant. Roughly chop nuts once cool enough to touch. If your nuts still have the papery husks attached, don’t worry about removing them. They’re perfectly edible.

Make Dressing

Combine orange juice, zest and ½ tsp salt in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in ¼ cup olive oil. Taste dressing and add more salt and a grind of pepper, if you like. Set aside.

Assemble Salad

Tear radicchio into bite-size pieces. Add to a large bowl and drizzle in half the dressing. Gently massage radicchio leaves with your hands. Add squash and 1 cup millet to the bowl, then gently mix to combine ingredients. Taste the salad and add additional dressing, salt, and pepper if needed.

Slice off the stem and navel ends of the second orange to reveal the flesh and create a stable base for cutting. Using a sharp knife, “shave” off the peel, following the shape of the fruit and preserving as much of the flesh as possible. Then slice the flesh into thin rounds. 

Top salad with citrus rounds, nuts and optional herbs. Buon appetito! 

A note about leftovers: 

• The salad is best when eaten the day you make it, but radicchio’s crisp leaves are forgiving, so the wilt factor is minimal compared to more delicate salad veggies. Store in the fridge and bring to room temp before eating. 

• Any remaining dressing can be refrigerated for a day or two. Bring to room temp before using.

• Leftover millet can be eaten for breakfast like Cream of Wheat or used as a base for grain bowls. It also freezes well for future use. 

For more information on the joys of winter vegetables, check out this informative guide from FoodPrint. 

Gas Stoves: More Than a Lifestyle Choice

This is a cross-posted blog from the Berman Institute of Bioethics’s Global Food Policy and Ethics (GFEPP) blog. It was written by Leslie Engel, MPH, a Science Writer Consultant for the GFEPP.

You’ve likely heard the recent flare up regarding gas stoves, inspired by statements from Richard Trumka Jr. of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

@copyright: Scientific American

It turns out that gas stoves are a major source of indoor air pollution from nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter, which they emit even when not in use. While discussing the health hazards this poses—-childhood asthma, respiratory illnesses, increased risk for cardiovascular disease and potentially dementia later in life—Trumka floated the idea of a ban if they could not be made safer. 

The reactions were swift and dramatic. One chef taped himself to his beloved gas stove in protest, while food activist and chef Alice Waters declared that she’s ready to go electric. On social media, home cooks passionately defended their gas stoves. And then there were the inflammatory comments from elected officials. To cool things off, the Biden administration quickly announced that there were no plans to ban them.

Based on this public discourse, one might think that the only people potentially impacted by gas stove regulations are chefs, aspirational home cooks and politicians. It’s been discussed as yet another lifestyle choice—one of our freedoms—that’s in danger of being taken away from us. 

And right on cue, Senators Cruz and Manchin have introduced the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, which would prohibit the CPSC from using federal funds to enact bans on gas stoves.

“The federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner, which is why Senator Cruz and I introduced bipartisan legislation to ensure Americans decide how to cook in their own homes,” said Manchin in a press release. 

There’s a lot of hot air blowing around.  

Yet it seems that we haven’t heard from communities disproportionately impacted by the ill effects of indoor air pollution. For example, asthma disproportionately affects low-income families and communities of color: 16% of African American non-Hispanic children, 13% of children of Puerto Rican descent and 11% of kids from homes with incomes less than 100% of the federal poverty level. For comparison, the rate of asthma among white children is 7%.

In a recent study, researchers reported that nearly 13% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. could be attributed to gas stove usage, on par with secondhand smoke. Those numbers increase in states with higher reliance on gas stoves, like Illinois, New York and California. Kids from low-income households may be at even higher risk of gas exposure due to poor stove ventilation and other factors related to their living situation.  

Many Americans don’t get to decide how to cook their own meals; they live in rental units, public housing or simply cannot afford to replace whatever cooking apparatus they already have. In New York City and Baltimore, gas outages in affordable housing have left residents without a reliable cooking source for weeks and even months at a time. Residents are provided with an electric hot plate, but one has to wonder how this impacts food choices and nutrition in the long run. 

For some, cooking with a gas stove is a lifestyle choice, but for many, it’s simply another structural inequity contributing to poor health outcomes.

By Leslie Engel, MPH, Science Writer Consultant for the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program

Grocery Delivery Services: A Mixed Bag

This is a cross-posted blog from the Berman Institute of Bioethics’s Global Food Policy and Ethics (GFEPP) blog. It was written by Leslie Engel, MPH, a Science Writer Consultant for the GFEPP.

Americans have more ways than ever to shop for the ingredients needed for their meals. This was not always the case. Prior to the first self-service grocery store opening over a century ago, shoppers had to rely on clerks to retrieve and package items for them. Since then—aside from the invention of scanners and self-checkout—the grocery shopping experience has remained largely unchanged. It’s an industry ripe for disruption, and tech companies have seized upon this.

Rowan Freeman, Unsplash License

Enter grocery delivery services. These companies make lofty promises—to eliminate the hassle of grocery shopping, meal planning, preparation, and even the act of cooking itself—while also being good for you and the environment. And more Americans than ever are now using them.

I worked as a recipe manager for a leading grocery delivery startup whose mission is to make healthy eating easy by using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict customer food preferences. As a professionally trained chef with a background in public health, I was fascinated with the ability of such services to seamlessly deliver top-quality, nourishing, and sustainable products and recipes to customers, potentially as another avenue to improve health and wellbeing through home cooking. However, as I developed yet another recipe involving ground beef, I began to question how healthy this industry really is, both for ourselves and for our food system.

Convenience, for a price
Convenience, safety, and accessibility are the main appeal of these delivery services. This was especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many consumers turned to delivery to avoid in-person shopping. In theory, this means that more people will have better access to food, especially those with health, mobility, or other constraints. However, convenience comes at a price, and grocery delivery services pass this cost onto consumers in the form of markups, service, and delivery fees. Additionally, increased food costs due to inflation likely render this convenience financially out of reach for those most in need.

Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions?
There’s some evidence that grocery delivery could be more environmentally friendly than hopping into the car because it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. A study in Washington State demonstrated that it may be more efficient for a fully stocked truck to deliver to multiple households in the same neighborhood rather than individuals driving to the store themselves. But this is a best case scenario. The biggest emissions reductions would require households to cluster their orders together and forgo specific delivery times, thus reducing the convenience factor and the main selling point of such services.

Tim Mossholder, Unsplash License

Reliance on California’s Central Valley
Twenty-five percent of our nation’s food is produced in the Central Valley of California. The area is so integral to business that the company I worked for hired someone specifically from the region to oversee produce sourcing. But its agricultural future is in peril: water is scarcer than ever, severe droughts related to climate change have diminished groundwater stores and decimated crops, and intensive farming practices exacerbate the problem.

Crop failures or shortages were a huge sourcing and supply chain headache with trickle down effects. Customers often complained about receiving an inferior product, or one not as uniform as what they were accustomed to. Receiving a last minute vegetable “swap” presented a whole new set of customer challenges: I don’t like the cauliflower that replaced my broccoli! And how am I supposed to cook this?

The end result was often wasted food, as evidenced in the customer comments I analyzed. Food wasted at the household level is especially egregious because it squanders all the resources that went into growing, processing, packaging, and shipping it. In the U.S., between 73 and 152 metric tons of food is wasted somewhere along the supply chain annually. About half of that waste is happening at the household or food service level. And worldwide, food waste contributes 8% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, making it a significant contributor to climate change.

Technology
When customers rated a product or recipe, it became a data point used to further refine the AI, which then “decides” what product or recipe will go into their next delivery. You’ve no doubt seen the effectiveness of this technology in eerily relevant pop-up ads. Similar to how AI learns which ads you are most likely to click on, it can also learn which foods you’re going to enjoy or not. Like that hamburger? You shall receive more ground beef! It becomes a feedback loop designed to retain customers and increase profits, but not necessarily improve your health or the environment.

Looking Ahead
I still believe that grocery delivery services and the technology that drives them are the way of the future and can be a positive force within the food system. AI can potentially be used to improve diets, not just increase profits; researchers have harnessed this technology to help people grappling with obesity and diabetes to eat better.

To improve access for everyone, the U.S. government should make it easier for grocery delivery companies to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).The USDA is currently piloting a program that enables SNAP recipients to purchase groceries online from select retailers. Incentives should also exist for companies to waive delivery and service fees for SNAP recipients.

In addition, produce should be sourced regionally when possible. Shorter transit distances from farm to fridge mean less greenhouse gas emissions and fresher, more nutritious produce with a longer shelf life that’s less likely to be tossed. Fresh Direct offers a selection of local produce and more services should follow suit. The increased demand could help boost struggling regional agriculture and decrease demand on the imperiled Central Valley. Finally, the biggest thing missing from this new grocery shopping experience are people. AI may be “filling” your cart, but humans still harvest, process, pack and deliver everything we eat for low wages in unsafe working conditions. The pandemic has revealed that the meatpacking industry will go to great lengths–at the expense of humans–to maintain production and profits. Most recently, dozens of children were found to be illegally working as sanitation workers in meatpacking plants. By further alienating ourselves from where our food comes from, we’re less likely to see the value in the people behind the scenes making sure your fridge is full.

Leslie Engel, MPH, is a Science Writer Consultant for the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program.

Understanding human water turnover in times of water scarcity

This writing was originally published in Cell Metabolism in their February issue.

Water covers 70% of the planet; however, only 3% is freshwater, which the global population depends on to drink, irrigate crops, and for our sanitation and hygiene. Water is central to almost all human activity and endeavors and, most importantly, the homeostasis of our bodily functions and health. We know that access to both adequate quantity and quality of water drives optimal health. Still, when in shortage or contaminated, it can cause deleterious effects on various health outcomes, some more known than others (1).

While there is substantial research understanding the health effects of insufficient water intake, there are measurement uncertainties in how much water people consume, retain, and excrete as well as a paucity of evidence on the influence of physical, metabolic, and environmental factors on water homeostasis in the human body. A recent study by Yamada et al. published in Science provides further insight into the determinants of water turnover (WT) or the water processed and used by the body (2). The largest study of its kind, they sampled 5,604 people living across 23 countries across diverse regions of the world ranging from 8 days to 96 years old. They examined whether age, body composition, physical activity, socioeconomic status, and geographical attributes of various regions impacted WT. They did this by having subjects consume 100 ml of water, of which 5% was deuterated. This isotope tracking allowed the investigators to measure WT in a highly accurate and precise way.

Predictably, WT was highest in neonates and decreased with age, positively correlated with free mass, total energy expenditure, and physical activity, and negatively correlated with percent body fat. Interestingly, where people live, and their livelihoods matter for WT as well. WT was higher in those living in hotter and more humid places and higher altitude areas. People with traditional livelihoods, such as hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers, had higher WT than those working outside agriculture. Furthermore, people living in countries characterized as having a low human development index (HDI)—a comprehensive composite index that measures the different dimensions of human development, including standards of living, life expectancy, and education—had higher WT than those living in countries with middle- and high HDI, even after adjusting for physiological and environmental factors.

While some of these results may not be surprising regarding age and biology, they present clear warning signs of vulnerability when considering looming global scenarios, trends, and shocks to water security, with poor populations disproportionately suffering the most severe consequences (3). The world is already grappling with water scarcity—the availability of water depends on an intimate dance between a region's water demand and water supply. As it stands, 4 billion people live with severe water scarcity at least one month a year, with nearly half of those people living in China and India. Half a billion live with severe water scarcity all year round (4). Distressing still, 784 million people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water (5). The figure below shows how these numbers break down by the four major country income groups, and climate change will likely worsen this situation.

Figure 1: Number of people (millions) without access to safe drinking water, 2020

Legend: Each bar represents the surface (drinking water directly from a river, dam, lake, pond, stream, canal, or irrigation canal), limited (drinking water from an improved source for which collection time exceeds 30 minutes for a roundtrip including queuing) and unimproved (drinking water from an unprotected dug well or unprotected spring) sources of drinking water by country income classification. Source: World Health Organization and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, 2021

Climate change will have significant impacts on how much water is available as well as its quality. Already, water systems that provide freshwater to human populations are drying up and polluted from overuse and runoff, much of this coming from agriculture and other anthropogenic forces (6). Water ecosystems around the world will also continue to be strained and stressed. For example, since 1900, approximately 68% of wetlands have been lost, which are essential ecosystems that purify drinking water systems, among many other functions (7). In addition, extreme weather events related to climate change, such as changes to precipitation and severe drought, as well as the melting of glacier ice, is and will continue to impact water resources. There will also be a decline in the quality of water sources due to anthropogenic and natural factors, along with an increased demand for water due to higher temperatures and evaporation rates. As a result, water insecurity under "business as usual" climate scenarios will worsen (8).

Human demand for water worldwide has increased six-fold over the past century and continues to rise at around 1% per year due to the growing population and global economy (9). At the current consumption rate, by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population may face water shortages (10). What will be the consequences for those vulnerable populations living in countries of low HDI given their increased demand for water? Even a slight imbalance in the delicate homeostasis of WT could put these populations at disproportionate risk for various health disparities, along with constraints on access to improved water safety and quality.

We are just beginning to understand the importance of how water is cycled through the body and how to measure it. Yamada and colleagues shed further light on the factors influencing how water is used and excreted in the body. One gap they highlight is the inability to measure the influence of water coming from food on WT. For those who work in food security, it will be necessary to understand how the quality and diversity of diets contribute to and potentially further protect water homeostasis in distinct biological, sociodemographic, and geographical contexts. Understanding this relationship could spur joint policy action among communities concerned with food and water security. With climate disruption continuing to threaten the quantity and quality of food and water sources, scientific and geopolitical collaboration has never been more urgent.  

References

1.     Popkin, B.M., D’Anci, K.E., and Rosenberg, I.H. (2010). Water, hydration, and health. Nutr. Rev. 68, 439–458.

2.     Yamada, Y., Zhang, X., Henderson, M.E.T., Sagayama, H., Pontzer, H., Watanabe, D., Yoshida, T., Kimura, M., Ainslie, P.N., Andersen, L.F., et al. (2022). Variation in human water turnover associated with environmental and lifestyle factors. Science 378, 909–915.

3.     Dell’Angelo, J., Rulli, M.C., and D’Odorico, P. (2018). The global water grabbing syndrome. Ecol. Econ. 143, 276–285.

4.     Mekonnen, M.M., and Hoekstra, A.Y. (2016). Four billion people facing severe water scarcity. Sci. Adv. 2, e1500323.

5.     World Health Organization and UNICEF (2021). World Health Organization and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. https://washdata.org/data/household#!/dashboard/new.

6.     van Vliet, M.T.H., Flörke, M., and Wada, Y. (2017). Quality matters for water scarcity. Nat. Geosci. 10, 800–802.

7.     Davidson, N.C. (2014). How much wetland has the world lost? Long-term and recent trends in global wetland area. Mar. Freshw. Res. 65, 934.

8.     IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press).

9.     Water, U.A.U.N. (2020). United Nations World Water Development Report 2020: water and climate change (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

10.   World Wildlife Fund. (2023). Water Scarcity https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity#:~:text=Billions%20of%20People%20Lack%20Water&text=By%202025%2C%20two%2Dthirds%20of%20the%20world's%20population%20may%20be,and%20economic%20decline%20may%20occur.