Food Bytes: January 2024 Edition

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

Things are off to a great start this new year. New York City finally got a bit of snow after 700 days without the fluffy stuff. It wasn’t much, but it was something. This absence of wintery weather further reinforces the idea that we live in a hotter world for any doubters out there…

It reminds me of a song, we, Sound Furies, wrote several years ago called 6-year snow on our 2nd album 3.3 x 3.3 = S.S.. The lyrics go something like this:

last night it snowed though it's almost summer
it hasn't snowed here for 6 yrs
maybe it was the silence, like a blanket in the night
we don't know why we had this dream

we got up and danced, to the silence of the snow
and then we really woke up at home

Here are some curated and random updates for January’s Food Bytes:

My friend and colleague Glenn Denning, a professor at Columbia University, wrote a fantastic book last year, Universal Food Security, and he is featured in Time magazine on how to feed the world sustainably.

Over the holidays, I read the 2023 Best American Food Writing curated by Mark Bittman, also a professor at Columbia. I loved the story, Is the Future of Food the Future We Want? by Jaya Saxena, written initially for Eater. Speaking of the future of food, is Grubstreet trying to make Steve Ells the found of Chipotle look like a serial killer? Check out what he is up to now…

I am now reading Mark Kurlansky’s The Big Oyster. Who knew how essential oysters were to New York City’s economic growth? If you like oysters, eat up - they are rich in zinc. I have lots of time for Mark’s writing on food history.

Far and Wide published an article on the best thing to eat in every country. There aren’t many surprises. For Italy, they chose Bolognese. Speaking of bivalves, I would have chosen spaghetti alla vongole myself…

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This past week had a lot of reporting looking back at 2023 and the impact climate change is having. It was clearly the hottest year and summer particularly on record. Just look at this graph to the right. Not sure anyone needs more convincing but if they do the new Ripple and colleagues paper hits home: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up.” YIKES…

About 60 food system experts published the Food Systems Countdown paper and report. I was really proud to get this out in the world. I hope it is now used…Speaking of data, it was great to see Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World featured in the NYT. I loved this quote from her:

“The role of science is not to dictate policy. Science identifies the problems. It can identify potential impacts. It doesn’t dictate solutions. The role of science is to say, “If you do this, this is the outcome.” It should not say, “This is what you ought to do.” Even in the book, I try to tread that line quite carefully. I’m trying not to be superprescriptive. We live in democracies. We need to make democratic choices. We move into dangerous areas if we try to undermine democracy in order to tackle these problems.”

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Here are a couple of other interesting articles/reports I read over the last two weeks:

• World Dev paper on forecasting acute malnutrition among children using environmental conditions (precipitation, temperature, vegetation) and lethal and non-lethal conflict activity as predictors. Punchline? These conditions matter.

• Arid regions are going to get even drier. It's not optimistic for pastoralists and the animals they roam with, who are already significantly constrained. It is estimated that 25% of the world is living with drought.

• UNEP put out a report, What’s Cooking, that assesses the state and future of alternative proteins. It's a worthy read on the growth and demand of these products.

• There are so many great articles in the Global Food Security journal. I enjoyed this article by Elizabeth Bryan at IFPRI on gender inequalities and strengthening women's agency to create more climate-resilient and sustainable food systems. Punchline? Women matter. A lot.

• Systems Change Lab put out a State of the Climate report. It presents a roadmap across the various sectors contributing to and could be a solution in mitigating climate change. They show how far we are off track (see the figure). Punchline? It ain’t pretty. My New Year's resolution is to try to be more positive. This report did not help.

I want to leave you with two videos. The first is the Winterkeeper in the Guardian. This lovely video is about the winter caretaker in Yellowstone National Park who has lived there for 50 years. What a life of a person who has lived tranquility and appreciation in kinship with nature. Oppenheimer seems to be sweeping the movie award season, and it is worth watching the real Oppenheimer to better understand his views later in his life about whether the atomic bomb was necessary. Have a watch.

Food Bytes: November 2023 Edition

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

I thought I would write up the November Food Bytes before the onslaught of publications leading up to the COP28 climate meeting takes place. Here is the roundup!

Some interesting articles and books:

The great “godfather of climate science,” Jim Hansen, also a Columbia colleague, has put out a paper with colleagues arguing the planet may be warming faster than previous estimates have indicated by measuring “climate sensitivity” – measuring the earth’s warmth via atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Global CO2 levels hovered around 280 parts per million in the pre-industrial age. Now, they are above 400 ppm. Not everyone agrees with this paper, but no matter, Hansen is sending us clear warnings.

We are more and more worried about how resilient our food systems are in the face of extreme events and shocks, be they climate, environmental, or political. This paper examines the impacts of crop yields related to several agriculture input shocks – nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, machinery, pesticide, and fertilizer. Industrialized agriculture systems depend on these inputs, and often, they are imported from other countries. When combined, as you can see in the figure, some areas showed decreased yields for some but not all crops. The yields of barley, maize, potato, and wheat decreased heavily in the western United States. Barley, maize, millet, potato, sorghum, and soybean yields all decreased in northern Argentina, while barley, maize, potato, and wheat. To some extent, sugar beet also saw large yield decreases in Central Europe. Rice yields, in turn, decreased heavily in Thailand, Vietnam, and the southern part of India.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00873-z/figures/3

My friend Bill Dietz, the Director of Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at George Washington University, and I just published a paper on how the U.S. agri-food sector can contribute to climate change mitigation. The paper is timely for the upcoming COP28 meetings. The U.S. needs to step up!

A new book on the political economy of food system transformation co-edited by Danielle Resnick and Johan Swinnen has been jointly published by IFPRI and Oxford University Press. The summary follows: “The current structure of the global food system is increasingly recognized as unsustainable. While the need to transform food systems is widely accepted, the policy pathways for achieving such a vision often are highly contested, and the enabling conditions for implementation are frequently absent.” Check it out and download it for free here.

Some interesting reports:

Every year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, also known as FAO, releases two flagship reports: the SOFI and the SOFA. The SOFA just came out this past week and focuses on the “true cost of food.” That means they assess the hidden environmental, health, and social costs of producing our food. What is their final assessment? Global hidden costs of food amount to 10 trillion dollars, with low-income countries bearing the highest burden of hidden costs. Yikes.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food released an interesting analysis in this report calling for food systems to wean off fossil fuels. Wouldn’t that be nice….They argue that food production, distribution, processing/packaging, storage, and sales consume about 15% of all fossil fuels generated annually. They argue that the fossil fuel industry holds a lot of sway with governments, making it difficult to “extract” (sorry for the pun) their influence or hold them to account.

A report by the group I-CAN, which looks at the integration of climate and nutrition, came out. It is interesting…nothing new…and much built on the long scientific publications already out there, but I supposed putting it in a layperson report gets the message out there.

Some interesting listens:

Vice did an “expose” on how the Italian mafia has taken over food systems in Italy. Having lived in Italy and interested in Italian deep food traditions, I watched it. The document is not well done, with much speculation and little evidence beyond a few interviews. If it is even true, I wasn’t convinced by this documentary.

John Oliver’s Halloween episode focused on the issues of child labor related to producing chocolate – focusing on Ghana and the Ivory Coast, where roughly 60% of it is produced. A lot of the material is borrowed from Netflix’s Rotten series. Still, the message is clear that many children (1.56 million) are engaged in cocoa production stemming from insufficient wages paid by massive confectionary companies to smallholder farming families working or owning cocoa farms, leaving them in gut wrenching poverty. Such a tragedy. I don’t think John Oliver adds much to the debate – if you want a quick watch, go to the Netflix episode.

In their usual snarky, pick-it-to-pieces style, Mike and Aubrey of the fantastic Maintenance Phase podcast sink their teeth into Ozempic, the weight loss diabetes treatment drug. It's well worth listening to the latest.

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.

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.

Food Bytes: October 2022 Edition

Food Bytes is a monthly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things climate, food, and nutrition science, policy, and culture.

It’s been a long while since I posted a Food Bytes edition, and so much has happened in the food space in the past year. First, a UN Food Systems Summit happened, but I remain quite unclear on what was achieved or what will come of the year-long work leading up to the event. Second, a devastating conflict between two breadbasket countries trudges on, putting food security concerns back on the geopolitical agenda. Third, extreme weather events, many related to climate change, unrelentingly warn us that our ability to feed a world of 8 billion (yikes) is precarious and precious. But science is there to nudge us, generating new knowledge on why we and every other species are here, what accelerates us, what destroys us, and where we are heading. Charles Mann wrote in The Wizard and the Prophet (a stellar book about William Vogt and Norman Borlaug’s discordant visions to feed the world):

Another thing this book is not: a blueprint for tomorrow. The Wizard and the Prophet presents no plan, argues for no specific course of action. Part of this aversion reflects the opinion of the author: in our Internet era, there are entirely too many pundits shouting out advice. I believe I stand on firmer ground when I try to describe what I see around me than when I try to tell people what to do.

I resonate with these sentiments. Even though science is plagued by warts, hiccups, and flaws, catalyzing evidence and data to help describe the world matters because it helps us understand nature, people, and the planet. With that background in mind, this month’s Food Bytes is all about highlighting the science community’s observations and uncertainties of a changing world and what it means for food systems and climate change. I purposely do not highlight the work of my team and collaborators, but if you are curious about when we do, you can look here.

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Source: McKay et al. SCIENCE 9 Sep 2022 Vol 377, Issue 661 DOI: 10.1126/science.abn7950

Let’s get the dark stuff out of the way. A paper by David Armstrong McKay and colleagues updated data showing that holding at 1.5°C will trigger multiple climate tipping points. What are these tipping points? Things like ice sheet “collapses,” forest “diebacks,” and permafrost “abrupt thaws” (see the figure to the right). These terms are downright scary but very plausible under different modeling scenarios. Okay, onto more uplifting news — KIDDING! Another study has shown that over the last 40 years, the Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world, also known as Arctic amplification. These are massive global shifts that will further warm the planet, creating all kinds of chaos. What does it mean for us wee creatures living in our humble abodes? Well, the news is not totally uplifting on that front either. We are and will be deeply impacted by climate — and no one is immune. Research by Sylvia Blom and colleagues showed that repeated, extreme heat shocks impact early child nutrition — both chronic and acute malnutrition. They show that in 5 West African countries, a 2 °C rise in temperature will increase the prevalence of stunting by 7%. As the two latest 2022 Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Reports on adaptation and mitigation, also known as the IPCC, argue, we still have time to act, although when you read it, you may want to have a nice glass of scotch in hand. While the window remains open, it is closing, and fast. We need to make massive changes to the way we live, much of that involving our use of resources. A recent Nature Sustainability paper showed that no country meets basic needs—such as nutrition, sanitation, and access to electricity—for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. To meet needs, we need to use resources somewhere between 2-6 times more to meet everyone’s needs. Gulp. Just take a look at the difference between the United States (a) and Sri Lanka (b) in the figure below. Blue wedges show social performance relative to the social threshold (blue circle), whereas green wedges show resource use relative to the biophysical boundary (green circle). The blue wedges start at the center of the plot (which represents the worst score achieved by any country), whereas the green wedges start at the outer edge of the blue circle (which represents zero resource use). Wedges with a dashed edge extend beyond the chart area. Ideally, a country would have blue wedges that reach the social threshold and green wedges within the biophysical boundary. Look at the inequities comparing the two countries!

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Source: O’Neill, D.W., Fanning, A.L., Lamb, W.F. et al. A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nat Sustain 1, 88–95 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0021-4

The research and science in understanding the impacts of climate change on food systems and vice versa are growing exponentially. It is hard to keep up with the literature and weed out the noise. One area that deserves more attention is the impact of food trade on global greenhouse gas emissions and the environment—particularly land-use change—a significant source of emissions coming from food and agriculture. A study showed that 27% of land-use emissions and 22% of agricultural land are related to international trade (2004-2017)—food products consumed in a different place from where they were produced. The largest land-use emission transfers come from Indonesia and Brazil to China, the U.S., and Europe. A PLoS paper examining the future of trade shows that if we keep managing and governing global trade as is, food systems will be misaligned with dietary health and sustainability outcomes.

Perhaps one solution is through changing agriculture subsidy policies. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published their annual SOFI report and highlighted the need to transform agriculture subsidy programs around the world towards those that generate and produce healthier food products. Marco Springmann at Oxford modeled the impacts of subsidy policies that focused on nutritious foods and found multiple benefits across both environment and health. I am really uncertain about the political appetite to change subsidies. Talk about vested interests… Speaking of priorities, Ben Davies and colleagues argue that making big transformative policy changes across food systems is wonderful, but don’t do it “on the backs of the rural poor.” Although there are 2.7 billion people engaged in small-scale food production and 1.1 billion people concomitantly living in extreme poverty while working in agriculture, they are often ignored in the “transformation” story.

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Affordability of a healthy diet grouped by five different food system typologies, showing transition of food systems. Source: Ambikapathi, et al Nat Food 3, 764–779 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00588-7

Positive transformation of food systems is not easy as history suggests. As Ramya Ambikipathi shows in a recent Nature Food paper, food systems have shifted from predominantly rural to industrialized and consolidated systems. Historically, incomes have risen faster than food prices as countries have industrialized, enabling a simultaneous increase in the supply and affordability of many nutritious foods. Evolving rural economies, urbanization, and changes in food value chains have accompanied these transitions, leading to changes in land distribution, a smaller share of agri-food system workers in the economy, and changes in diets. While the affordability of a recommended healthy diet has improved over time, food systems overall are falling short of delivering optimal nutrition and health outcomes, environmental sustainability, and inclusion and equity for all. Another fantastic paper by Jeff Waage and colleagues in Lancet Planetary Health shows the complex and risky relationship between agriculture and infectious disease, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries that are undergoing rapid food system transitions. They remind us that lessons can be drawn from COVID-19 and the rise of zoonotic spillover events within food systems should be prioritized (and minimized) on the political agenda.

Ensuring that everybody gets access to and consumes a healthy diet will remain a global challenge. The metrics, indicators, and data in understanding what people eat and why are improving. Just check out the Global Diet Quality Project, which collects dietary quality data in the adult population across countries worldwide using the Gallup poll and provides tools to monitor diet quality within countries. Wow. I hear rumblings of a global report coming out soon, so stay tuned. There has been a whole range of papers coming out on diet quality. Victoria Miller at Tufts University is on a roll. In one recent Nature Food paper, she examines diets across 185 countries from 1990 to 2018 using the Global Dietary Database (estimates and modeled). Their assessment shows that diet quality is modest at best but varies significantly depending on where you live, how old you are, and how much education you have. No surprises, but good to see more data emerging from this database. Miller and colleagues also published a more specific paper examining the consumption of animal-sourced foods worldwide showing that meat consumption is lower or higher than optimal intakes depending on the population. Another Miller paper published in JAMA examines the association of specific dietary factors with coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes using a systematic review. The table below summarizes the relative risks of the associations of nutrients with heart disease and diabetes events. Bottomline? Eat your fiber.

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Source: Miller et al JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(2):e2146705. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.46705

Another emerging area gaining significant traction with scientific consensus is ultra-processed foods (UPFs), a term loathed by the food industry and a handful of nutritionists. The majority of those working in nutrition epidemiology and public health largely agree that UPFs—food-like substances extracted from foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars, and hydrogenated fats that also contain additives like artificial colors and flavors or stabilizers—are detrimental to human health across a bolus of outcomes. Many people argue that these foods should be regulated, avoided, and minimized in the global food system. If you want to hear more about this ongoing debate, check out this BBC podcast and this online debate with some heavy hitters in the space like NIH’s Kevin Hall, Marion Nestle, and Mike Gibney. The next frontier for these foods is their environmental impact. While a handful of papers argue that these foods have a significant environmental and climate footprint, the evidence is scant, and much more needs to be done in this space.

The question is, are alt-meats in this category? The pace of science in this space is hard to keep up with as there is a lot coming out in the grey literature (see the IPES report and the OECD report as examples) along with peer-reviewed publications, but some of what is available often bends towards ideology and less science. Same with plastics. There is deep concern about microplastics showing up all over the place, including food, but the evidence and impact of these plastics on health outcomes need much more exploration. So while Mr. McGuire told Ben in The Graduate, that the future lay with one word, plastics, we may need to re-examine that advice in light of the fragility of our world.

The lost art of reading a book

I recently did an interview for the Reading List with Phil Treagus. I am a big book fan (my better half is a book publisher and archiver) but especially books on food (go figure). I also have two books coming out this year that I am pretty excited about. The first is through Johns Hopkins University Press titled “Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?” The book is my own take on improving food systems and brings in a lot of my own experiences working on food issues in different places in the world. It comes out May 2021. The second book is a textbook published by Palgrave titled “Global Food Systems, Diets and Nutrition: Linking Science, Economics and Policy.” My colleague Claire Davis and I are excited to see this book out in June 2021.

This is what I had to say about books and you can also go to the original interview here.

How do you describe your occupation?

Educator and researcher of food systems.

Talk us through a typical day for you…

My day starts with a series of very early morning (begins around 5 am) zoom meetings with other researchers and organizations (UN, NGOs, etc.) working in Europe, Africa, and Asia on projects, publications, or initiatives. If I am not teaching a course that semester, I usually have one guest lecture to do and am usually on one or two public panels/webinars/keynote talks throughout the day. I try to block some time to read, write and do data analysis and, of course, to exercise (one hour a day)—usually mid-morning or late afternoon. Sometimes, I have 10-15 meetings throughout the day, so having concentrated focus time is challenging. Dinner is always the highlight of the day. We eat early, like 5:30, and my husband whips up gourmet meals. We usually watch something on Netflix or Criterion for about an hour or so. Then back at it to do a bit of writing in the early evening. I am in bed (and asleep) by 10 pm.

What are you reading at the moment, and what made you want to read it?

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie. With so much dis- and misinformation on facts, data, and evidence, and the significant conflicts of interest in the food world, I was very keen to look inward into the science community that generates information. Where have we failed? Where are our faults? What could we do better? This book highlights the pitfalls of how we develop, communicate and vet science (with nutrition examples throughout the book) and turns the mirror on the science world. It is fantastic!

Can you remember the first book you read by yourself?

It is a toss-up. The two that stand out to me and are forever imprinted on my brain is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert O’Brien and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Strangely, and I haven’t thought about this until just now, both involve the food world. Mrs Frisby (a mouse) needs to move her home, which is endangered from the fields’ annual spring plowing. She asks a sophisticated bunch of rats for help. The story of James centers on a boy who enters a peach, and his world changes. Both stories highlight the magic and mysticism of ecosystems and experiences with that magic.

Are you a page folder or a bookmarker?

Page folder. But I go one step further. I fold the top of the current page I am reading so I know where I am the next time I pick up the book. I fold the page’s bottom if there is something on that page I want to go back to or research later.

Can you tell us a little more about the Global Food Security Journal?

The Journal strives to publish evidence-informed strategic views of experts from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on prospects for ensuring food security, nutrition, and health across food system issues. We wish to publish reviews, perspectives articles, and debates that synthesize, critique and extend findings from the rapidly growing body of original publications on global food security, nutrition, food systems, and related areas; and special issues on critical topics across food security, food systems, and nutrition including how these are impacted by climate and environmental dynamics.

If you could gift yourself books at age 16 and age 25 – what would they be and why?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan and The End of Food by Paul Roberts. Pollan has mastered the craft of telling compelling food stories that have political, social and environmental repercussions in such an approachable way. While the book focuses mainly on the United States, it does raise questions as to the sustainability and ethics of how we grow our food and the individual dietary choices we make every day. Pollan has his fair share of critics, but I have yet to see an academic write such a compelling narrative on the fractured global food system. Paul Roberts’s book had an even deeper impact on me. It was hard to eat after reading his book because essentially, you feel the world is doomed! As Jim Morrison of The Doors sang, “the future is certain and the end is always near.” The End of Food, as the title suggests, brings those lyrics to life…

If you could invite 5 authors (dead or alive) to a dinner party – who would they be and why?

Amartya Sen (for his incredible influence on how we view poverty, famine, and human development and his many authored books including Poverty and Famine). Mark Kurlansky (for his incredible journalistic deep dives into things like Salt, Cod and Paper). Leah Penniman (author of Farming While Back and co-owner of Soul Fire Farm. A walking the talk author and entrepreneur!). Rachel Carson (for her landmark book Silent Spring that influenced the entire environmental movement). Joseph Campbell (his vast knowledge on the human experience and author of A Hero with a Thousand Faces). I highly recommend the interviews he had done towards the end of his life with Bill Moyer. After watching that, I wanted to be better at my craft.

What was the last book you purchased, and why did you buy it?

New Climate War by Michael Mann. Michael is a climatologist at Penn State. He is a clear communicator and fantastic science whose work has helped build the evidence on global warming. His new book is all about the politics of inaction on climate. In the food world, and very much tied to climate, we face similar issues of political inertia, interference and power imbalance of powerful industry players and complex scientific messages. Hopefully, I can learn something from Mann’s experience in battling the “merchants of doubt” and how he and others have fought to keep the evidence of climate change on the top of the global agenda.

What is your favourite thing about reading?

The quiet time and the ability to reflect on other’s views, worlds, and perspectives. I also find that I like the feel, experience, and act of reading an actual book as opposed to an e-book or an audiobook.

What’s the best book you’ve read in the last 6 months?

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Written in 1962 but felt like it was written in 2020.

In your Twitter bio you describe yourself as a ‘goat lover’, I have to ask you to elaborate on this…

Goats are just so cool. Resilient, smart, and independent. And did you know they can surf? My husband and I even keep a blog, named “Goat Rodeo.” Speaking of books, there is a great book about goats entitled Goat Song by Brad Kessler who leaves New York City with this partner to go raise Nubian goats in Vermont.

If you could insert yourself into any book, which would you pick and why?

This is a tough one! Maybe Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. Robert would roam the city streets of New York in the silence and darkness of night observing what rats would feast on, and how they lived their lives. I am disgusted by but fascinated with these resilient little creatures and it would have been fun to spend a year doing this sort of rodential research. Turns out their diets are a lot like humans…they like junk food.

What is the book that you feel has had the single biggest impact on your life? What impact did it have?

This is really a tough one. I want to say Ulysses by James Joyce but that is a total lie. Perhaps Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. As a trained molecular nutritionist, it upended the way I think about food, human health and environmental sustainability. I pulled my head out of the petri dish and have focused much more on their connections and the macro- long view of food systems and how and where they fit into sustainable development.

If you could only own three cookbooks, which would you pick and why?

Anything by Alice Waters but especially The Art of Simple Cooking. She lays out the necessities of cookware, ingredients and basic recipes you need to at least feel like you are cooking organic, wholesome food straight out of the 1970s Berkeley. She also just propels food and cooking to an art form. Bibi’s Kitchen because it highlights the diversity of Africa’s cuisine told through and shared by grandmothers. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. She makes cooking so approachable.

Are there any books you haven’t mentioned that you feel would make your reading list?

I’d also include:

Chronicles by Bob Dylan,
Just Kids by Patti Smith (I am a big fan of music books),
Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss,
Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton,
Food Politics and Soda Politics by Marion Nestle (see our interview with Marion Nestle),
Mass Starvation by Alex De Waal,
One Day I will Write About this Place by Binyavanga Wainaina,
Four Fish by Paul Greenberg,
Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz,
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann,
and The Way we Eat Now by Bee Wilson.

Which book sat on your shelf are you most excited about reading next and why?

The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr. I love the premise of this book. The author takes the reader through the inner workings of the nebulous supermarket that has become the powerhouse influencer on our diets. I am sort of scared though. I have a feeling I am going to never want to set foot in a supermarket again after reading this. Much like how I felt after reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I have yet to eat at McDonald’s (not that I really want to) since reading that book…

In Africa, Covid-19 Threatens to Worsen Hunger

This is a cross-posted blog and originally on Bloomberg Opinion. The original can be read here.

The continent has some unique strengths, but food insecurity is a special vulnerability. 

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends,” Joan Didion wrote in “Goodbye to All That.” Her words resonate in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when no one has a clue whether we’re at the beginning, in the middle or near the end. In sub-Saharan Africa, not knowing is especially worrisome because it’s difficult to tell whether the continent’s fragile food supply systems will weather the strain.

 While the continent has made great strides toward economic security over the past several decades, Covid-19 could stymie that progress. Conditions vary greatly from country to country, but many struggles to ensure that their citizens have access to basic essentials: soap to clean hands, potable water and nutritious food to keep immune systems strong. Hunger and food insecurity have not gone away. Twenty-three percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. Because of the global economic fallout from Covid-19, the number of people worldwide facing acute food insecurity could nearly double this year to 265 million, the United Nations World Food Programme estimates, and much of that impact will be felt in Africa.

 At the same time, obesity and noncommunicable diseases (heart disease and diabetes for example) are rising in many low-income countries, Africa included, and both are proving to be serious complications for people infected with Covid-19. Much of the continent is also still dealing with other complex infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other neglected tropical illnesses – that will make it more difficult to treat Covid-19 infections.

 As it expands on the continent, Covid-19 will put further stress on already strained health systems – with limited numbers of ventilators and proper beds, minimal personal protective equipment, and, in some places, too few health care workers.

At the same time, food supply chains are starting to falter. Lockdowns in 30 African countries have made it very challenging for farmers to sell their goods in markets or for workers to get to fields. Food assistance is not always making it to those most in need. Many informal markets – the infamous wet or open-air markets, where most Africans shop for food – are closed, further imperiling food insecurity and threatening malnutrition. Reports from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition’s offices in Nigeria and Mozambique noted that prices of food, particularly the fruits and vegetables, have increased significantly.

In many African cities, social distancing and self-isolation are a recipe for disaster. Slums and informal settlements are overcrowded and lack basic services such as running water, cooking facilities, and electricity. And even if people infected with the coronavirus had safe places to isolate, some feel they must work to keep their families fed. Commutes to work often involve overfilled buses and long traffic jams – which increase the spread of disease.

With global unemployment rising, remittances worldwide are also are expected to fall – by 20%, or nearly $110 billion, according to the World Bank. In sub-Saharan Africa, they may drop by 23%. This will push more people to go to work, increasing their exposure.

To be sure, African countries have a few things working in their favor. For one, they have experience with massive infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and polio, to name a few – and public health systems have been strengthened over the last decade. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been hard hit by Ebola, but there are signs of progress with a declining case load in early 2020.

 In the current crisis, African governments can take some early lessons from the rest of the world that has been grappling with the pandemic a month or two longer, and work to keep the food supply moving. The continent is still 60% rural, and many urban Africans have close ties to the countryside, owning land or family plots. With luck, lower population density in rural areas may slow the spread of Covid-19, allowing farmers to continue to grow food, that is if they can get access to seeds and the technologies needed to plant and harvest. Support to food producers is an absolute necessity to keep the continent food sufficient.

 Sub-Saharan Africa is also fortunate to have a relatively young population, which may make it better able to weather outbreaks of Covid-19 with less hospitalization and death.

 Still, it remains hard to see the end. Some people hypothesize, with little evidence, that Africa may not be hit as hard as other places because of its warm climate. Perhaps, they say, the spread will be slower in Africa, and that will buy extra time. Given how easily Covid-19 has spread in other warm places such as Singapore and Thailand, that’s not something to count on.

 To ensure that Africa doesn’t starve and that it can weather the Covid-19 storm, it is essential to make sure people are guaranteed access to food, water, soap, masks, and cash transfers to support their families. The poorest and most vulnerable should be the priority. World governments with their donor partners, including the World Bank and the World Food Programme, will be counted on for support over the next four months. Businesses who make food products need support as well. We must all help make sure they come through.

The silent companion: Food Bytes Edition April 2020

Silence. We sit in our houses, in silence, watching the world from afar with only COVID-19 as our silent companion. But this silence isn’t really calming. The silence has an urgency to it. It is loud. And there is only so much silence one can take.

We are seeing the restlessness. We are seeing signs of noise. The world wants to open up and get things moving again. But that is risky. And our companion is keen to stay with us, just sitting in the quiet.

But some things have to move. Like our food system. As precocious Lawrence Haddad wrote:

“Keep the supply of nutritious food moving—and expand the flow. Unlike the 2008-2009 food price crisis, this coming crisis is not one of drought, oil prices, and biofuels. This is a car crash of supply chain logistics.”

Yes, cars crashing. Noisy.

There is also information noise. Some good, and some bad. As science and data emerge, the noise will get filtered out. Until then, we have to adapt to the loud stream of information to find the gems. Here are a few:

• The Nutrition Connect has been diligently publishing blogs on food, nutrition, and COVID on a weekly basis. We are up to 21! There have been a few really good papers on the implications of COVID on the food system.

• Maximo Torero of FAO published a Nature commentary on food supply chains. He argues that while stocks of food are sufficient, that is quickly changing with food price spikes, food sitting at ports, exports being banned, and dumping of commodities.

• Chris Barrett at Cornell University also published an important piece on food shocks. He argues that food supply disruptions must be met with safety nets to ensure that the world avoids catastrophic hunger.

• The Economist published an excellent overview of export trade, supply, and demand changes in the food system and what can be done to avert hunger. They argue that trade must stay open and keep food flowing.

• Jennifer Clapp points out the inefficiencies and weaknesses of the food system in this short op-ed in the New York Times. She argues, instead, to support local value chains and supply.

• The NYT has a well-rounded piece on meatpacking processing facilities and the fall-out of potential large-scale declines in meat production and processing, along with potential positives on the climate.

• Yours truly published a piece at Bloomberg Opinion on the challenges and maybe gleams of hope that the continent of Africa has to avoid catastrophic food insecurity.

And then there is the future of restaurants, the places where many of us go to socialize, try new cuisines, and enjoy the fruits of our food system in all its finest glory. A few very thoughtful articles have been published on the future of restaurants and what they will look like (NOT THE SAME, NOT AS MANY, AND NOT AT THE SAME PRICE STRUCTURE…). Some will close their doors, forever. There is that silence again. Here are a few good reads:

• The New Order, by Tom Sietsema: “Restaurants can’t possibly return to their old selves, at least not immediately. I imagine fewer tables, longer lines outside restrooms, hand sanitizer where flowers used to be, and shorter menus with fewer contributors.”

• As Restaurants Remain Shuttered, American Cities Fear the Future, by Jennifer Steinhauer and Pete Wells: “The danger facing restaurants, which thrive on crowded rooms and get by on razor-thin margins, poses a special threat to small cities and large towns where a robust food culture plays an outsize role in the economy. In places that had been hollowed out by poverty and suburban flight, like parts of Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Detroit, they are engines of growth.”

• My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore? by Gabrielle Hamilton: “And yet even with the gate indefinitely shut against the coronavirus, I’ve been dreaming again, but this time I’m not at home fantasizing about a restaurant I don’t even yet have the keys to. This time I’ve been sitting still and silent, inside the shuttered restaurant I already own, that has another 10 years on the lease.”

While sitting still and silent may no longer be an option for the global economy (it is imploding on a profound level), nor the food system, if we are to remain viable, we need to support our food system workers, producers, and entrepreneurs. They need personal protection, living wages, and decent work. These buffers will keep economies chugging along, and potentially stave off widespread hunger and malnutrition. Until then, turn it up and bring the noise.

Food bytes: March 21st edition

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

As much as we want to pretend all is normal, it is clearly not. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, with a massive amount of uncertainty, fear, and in some places, complacency. We will be posting another blog entry on the COVID crisis but for now, we will highlight, just a few emerging articles on the growing concern of food insecurity and the food supply, along with our regular updates on all things happening in the food space.

On COVID, we have never been in a situation like this before with talk of it reshaping the global order or social collapse or cohesion. So to predict how markets will continue to react to the future and the health of the global food supply is uncertain. Anyone who postulates how it will go is misleading us. Yes, of course, we can look in real-time on how households and communities are handling the crisis, and we can look to the past, on how other pandemics like the Spanish Flu, impacted food security and supplies. However, times are different. Food supplies are globalized. The population in 1918 was 1.6 billion. We are now at 7.5 billion.

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Locusts in east africa (copyright: BBC News)

Rob Vos at IFPRI argues there is no major concern for food insecurity, yet. They came to this conclusion by looking at food prices of staple crops. Huh. As the Brookings Institution rightly pointed out, low-income seniors are already feeling the impacts. In the U.S., with roughly 15% of households being food insecure, some are concerned about their ability to feed themselves in the coming months. A WaPo article quoted: “If coronavirus doesn’t get us, starvation will.” Then there is Africa. Food insecurity and stark hunger could worsen in an already fragile context. East Africa is also reeling from an invasion of locusts which don’t help the already burgeoning food insecurity in the region. This video is pretty insane if you want to see the locust infestation.

The EAT-Lancet Commission report follow ons just keep coming. Did you know that the report has already been cited 790 times since its publication in January 2019? Insane! A few interesting articles are emerging that again test the validity of the Commission’s findings.

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The water footprint (blue and green water) of different nut types (shelled) as well as some other food products for comparison, in litre/kg and litre per g of protein. (Vanham et al 2020)

• One article published by the LIvestock Innovation Lab at the University of Florida shows the importance of animal source foods and explains that raising livestock and eating animal source foods can be compatible with sustainable development.

• Another article questioned the recommendation in the report to increase nut consumption. The article dissects the water intensity issues in producing trees and ground nuts especially in India, China, Pakistan, the Middle East, Mediterranean, and the U.S. Check out cashews in the figure!!

• A publication in the Journal of Nutrition argued that the mortality reduction effect of the EAT-Lancet proposed diet in the USA is no greater than the impact of energy consumption changes that would prevent under-weight, over-weight, and obesity alone, calling into question its findings. Authors are funded by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association…

• Pedro Sanchez, one of the world’s experts on tropical soils and a World Food Prize winner wrote a piece about the land needed to grow the Lancet-EAT diet was oversimplified. He provided some alternative calculations. He argues that current total world food production is estimated at 9.30 billion metric tons of crops and animal-sourced foods, with crops grown in 1.27 billion hectares of land. Implementation of the EAT-Lancet diet for 10 billion people by 2050 would require a lot less, 5.39 billion metric tons of food in 1.10 billion hectares of cropland, assuming no increase in crop yields.

Pedro’s paper was part of a special issue in Food Policy in the Food Policy journal initiated by Editor in Chief Chris Barrett. The issue is about the evolution of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the international agricultural research centers (IARCs) that comprise the CGIAR System. Over the past two decades, the CGIAR has undergone a series of reforms with the latest reform being termed “One CGIAR”.  Maybe they should take a lesson from the UN and find out how the One UN worked out…The special issue is out and is meant to “help inform a research strategy for the new One CGIAR.”

Robotics, AI, nano. Will these technologies transform the food system, and eliminate the “human” element from agriculture work? Yet to be seen. This article in the Economist discusses agricultural robots. And they have names: Tom, Dick, and Harry.

In the world of nutrition, meat will remain a controversial topic that is heating up. Nutrition is always accused of having serious conflicts of interest - who pays for the research? Who is biased? Who is paid off? JAMA and Scientific American highlights the controversy with meat-funded research and plant-funded research - and the “bullying” by both sides. Katz responds here. The livestock industry responds here. This debate has left consumers confused, and lacking any trust in science. A few other tidbits on meat. This NYT opinion piece by Alicia Wittmeyer argues that to stop eating meat, can alienate us from our traditions. Meanwhile, the EU is considering a tax on meat.

Speaking of diets, with 2.1 billion overweight and obese adults, and half of the U.S. facing obesity, we need some new strategies. Intermittent fasting seems to be all the rage these days as the best way to lose weight and keep it off. A review in JAMA highlights the evidence, and NYT provided some guidance. We tried it. It is not so hard. Just eat between the hours of noon and 8 pm. Thereafter, no calories should be consumed in solid or liquid forms.

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Changes in purchases of high-in beverages, by education level of household head (Tallie Smith et al 2020)

Diet quality matters too. Bee Wilson, an amazing writer of food and its history, wrote a long piece in the Guardian on the contributions of ultra-processed foods on the global obesity crisis. These foods are cheap, attractive and convenient, and we eat them every day. But they are also riddled with sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. This article is worth the read. Some countries are worried. Take Chile. They instituted a Food Labelling and Advertising which put warning labels on the front of food packages if the food was high in sugar, high in salt or high in fat. Sugary drinks, unhealthy snacks, and packaged foods must carry the front-of-pack labels. These foods are also regulated. These foods cannot be marketed or sold in schools or on TV. Has it worked? Yup. Sales of these foods are down 23%. In college-educated consumers, as you can see in the figure, purchases were done 29%!

Food Bytes: February 10th Edition

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

2020 is off and running and the world finds ways to fill in the gaps it makes.

There is lots of interesting stuff being published or planned for publishing in the food systems space.

There are new journals out there. Nature Food released its inaugural issue called “silos and systems” (with a corn silo on the cover) and it is really great so far. Highly recommend reading it - all open access articles to boot! While it has been around about two years, Nature Sustainability is high-quality and publishes a lot on food systems. Colleagues at Cornell are working with the Journal to come up with evidence-based innovations across food supply chains ready for scale-up. More on this project can be found here. The prestigious Cell Journal now has a sister journal called “One Earth.” While it focuses on climate and earth sciences, there are lots of food gems in each issue thus far.

I am also serving as the Editor in Chief of the Global Food Security Journal. We publish:

1. Strategic views of experts from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on prospects for ensuring food security, food systems, and nutrition, based on the best available science, in a clear and readable form for a wide audience, bridging the gap between biological, social and environmental sciences.

2. Reviews, opinions, and debates that synthesize, extend and critique research approaches and findings from the rapidly growing body of original publications on global food security and food systems.

I am also serving as an Associate Editor of Food Systems and the Environment for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. We published our 10-year vision. In that, we highlight that the Journal will be soliciting cutting-edge papers that disentangle research that spans food system activities and actors, environmental change, and health and nutrition outcomes, taking into account the rapid socioeconomic, political, and societal transitions in the 21st century. The research space is complex and requires a convergence of new disciplines to understand the benefits and trade-offs of evidence so vital to improving diets and nutrition. We are looking for agriculture, food value chains, climate, environment, and diet themes to come together to answer the many evidence gaps that impact nutrition and human health.

The Lancet series on the double burden came out in late 2019 basically showing that there is a significant increase in low- and middle-income countries struggling with both undernutrition and overweight and obesity. The second and third papers on the etiology and actions to address the double burden stand out.

There is some controversy brewing in the nutrition world. But what else is new? JAMA published a pretty scathing article about conflicts of interest stemming from the series of articles that meat is actually not detrimental, or at least, neutral for health. JAMA argues that another group of scientists basically bullied the journal into retracting the articles, which did not happen. The JAMA called it “information terrorism.” What a mess.

A few of us from GAIN and Johns Hopkins University presented the Global Food Systems Dashboard at IFPRI last week. Check out the video and highlights here. The Dashboard brings together extant data from public and private sources to help decision-makers diagnose their food systems and identify all their levers of change and the ones that need to be pulled first.  Follow updates and announcements of the official launch on Twitter.