Food Bytes: October 2024 Edition

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

There is much to catch up on in this month’s Food Bytes. The fall season here in the U.S. always brings a lot of productivity. There seem to be more meetings, more papers, and more output. We just finished the UN General Assembly and Climate Week in New York. I love seeing so many friends and colleagues come to town, but it is exhausting. There are so many “side” events. We hosted a Bollinger Convening at Columbia’s Climate School that brought together some of the best people in the food systems field, including the President of Malawi, the PM of Haiti, and the First Lady of Brazil. Good times were had by all, but I deeply wonder if all the time, money, and greenhouse gases spent flying to NY actually amount to meaningful change. There were swanky events where people were nibbling on gourmet hors d'oeuvres, drinking champagne cocktails, and pontificating about solving poverty through quick tech fixes…It is a bit nauseating, to say the least. The same goes for COP, Davos, etc. As one of my colleagues said, “Just say you want to bring all your friends into town and have a big party. But don’t think you will solve the world doing so.” Point taken. Ollie Camp at GAIN did an excellent re-cap for those who couldn’t make it to Gotham. For an even briefer re-cap, all the food-focused events seem to be honing on two topics: (1) regenerative agriculture (what exactly is it?) and (2) the livestock conundrum. The UN produced a Pact for the Future with 56 actions for a global transformation protecting present and future generations. Is this the next set of Sustainable Development Goals?

Reports

The Tilt Collective, a new initiative focusing on plant-based foods, made a big splash at Climate Week. It will be interesting to see where they go. They have a report to explain their plan further, and the CEO, Sarah Lake, summarizes her modus operandi on a Tedtalk that can be found on the Tilt homepage. The Gates Foundation also released its Goalkeepers report and had a splashy event at Climate Week, focusing on nutrition. They argue that “No other global health problem requires a larger-scale solution than malnutrition.” I tend to agree…

Speaking of nutrition, the World Bank released their much anticipated Investment Framework for Nutrition. They argue that scaling up nutrition interventions to address undernutrition globally will require an additional $13 billion annually over the next ten years (2025-2034). This would mean $13 per pregnant woman and $17 per child per year under five years. This investment could avert 6.2 million deaths in children under age five and 980,000 stillbirths over the next decade.

Food systems are garnering attention from less traditional UN bodies. UNDP released a white paper on food system transformation. I'm not sure it says much more than what we already know. UNEP has a rich interactive site called the Journey of Food. The most depressing report of all is the WWF’s Living Planet Report. The average size of wildlife has decreased a staggering 73% since 1970. Most of that is driven by habitat loss (see the figure to the right showing the drivers of species loss in North America), mainly from agriculture. Read the report — it is depressing but critically important for our planet and us.

Science papers

It is getting hard to keep up with food-climate-nutrition scientific output these days because there is just so much of it. This is a good problem to have. Here are some highlights of what I have been reading over the past two weeks.

  • Nature Food’s September issue is rich in sustainable diet science. I appreciated Loken and colleagues' paper on the importance of culture to diet health and sustainability.

  • If you want to double down on your doomsday depression about the state of the planet, Ripple and colleagues deliver yet again! Bottomline? We are so screwed.

  • Emmerling and colleagues have a fantastic paper in Nature Climate Change that examines the relationship between climate change and inequality. The scientists model that by 2100, climate impacts will increase inequality by 1.4 points of the Gini index on average. If we stay within the Paris Climate Agreement to stay below 1.5 °C, long-term inequality increases by two-thirds but increases slightly in the short term. It's so great to see this topic getting some attention.

  • Last, the Lancet published the Earth Commission report. In it, they “quantify safe and just Earth-system boundaries and assess minimum access to natural resources required for human dignity and to enable escape from poverty. Collectively, these describe a safe and just corridor essential to ensuring sustainable and resilient human and planetary health and thriving in the Anthropocene.” It is a long read but worth it.

  • The Food Compass, out of Tufts University, has published its second paper, improving on its nutrient profiling system that assesses the healthfulness of diverse foods, beverages, and meals. Their score, named FSC grouped foods into three categories: foods and beverages scoring ≤30 are those to be minimized, foods and beverages scoring 31–69 are those to be consumed in moderation, and foods and beverages scoring ≥70 are encouraged. They found that among all products, 23% scored FCS ≥70; 46%, FCS 31–69; and 31%, FCS ≤30. Most beverages (54%) and animal fats (92%) scored ≤30; whereas most meat, poultry, eggs and dairy scored 31–69. Most products within seafood, legumes, nuts, vegetables and fruits scored ≥70 (82%, 80%, 89%, 63% and 53%, respectively. Nothing too shocking no?

Media

Of course, our favorite media outlets are always generating some food journalism.

  • This BBC piece is balanced about the ultra-processed nature of plant-based alt foods. Thanks for sending it my way Hermano Herrero!

  • The FT has highlighted this notion that the US has reached peak obesity. Is it behavior change or ozempic?

  • The scorching and dredging of the Amazon is happening, and the potential devastation to ecosystems and those who depend on its mighty waters is for realzzzz. Brings me back to the piece I wrote about rivers.

  • The hippie-dippie Erowon-esque food crazes won’t die, and the city of Los Angeles leads the way in blisfull ridiculousness. This New Yorker article captures the insanity well.

  • Love tuna? So do I but should we be eating so much of it. The NYT fishes around for the deets.

  • Speaking of tuna, I started watching the series, Omnivore, curated by the chef, Rene Redzepi. Each episode focuses on a singular food or ingredient. The first is on tuna. Great watch about the importance of food across many cultures.

And that’s about all she wrote for this month. Just some final closing words. This month was not the easiest for many people. Some parts of the world are in intractable conflict. My parents lost just about everything in Hurricane Helene, and my good friend Richard Deckelbaum passed. And the U.S. election has me filled with much dread. Yesterday, I turned 53 and have much to be grateful for. My parents are alive and okay. Richard led a long, amazing life. And people are out there fighting the good fight for democracy, climate action and the world's wellness. I am filled with hope. And not the kind of hope that is a belief that everything was, is, and will be fine. It is the kind of “hope” about the possibilities and the actions for our future.

Food Bytes: September 2024 Edition

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

The chaos of the semester has begun along with the long lead-up to climate week here in NYC. Many side events are happening around the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and Climate Week. Do all these events amount to something tangible? It is unclear in my mind’s eye, but I do love seeing food experts and friends converge in Gotham.

So let’s get started. If you are coming to NYC next week, please do join us at Columbia for the Bollinger Convening, where we will highlight the importance of evidence, research, and data (although you wouldn’t believe they matter if you watched the U.S. presidential debate - cats? dogs?) in addressing hunger and malnutrition. We are also hosting a Forward Food & Fashion event. Join us!

So first, the most depressing. Sudan’s famine situation is worsening to a catastrophic level. Absolutely devastating. Let’s hope this is high on the agenda at the UNGA and that leaders act swiftly. While some argue that Gaza is also experiencing a catastrophic famine, others disagree — the debate played out in the American Journal of Nutrition. Michael Fakhri, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, also weighed in.

Some papers I am reading this week:

  • Simone Passarelli and colleagues performed a modeling exercise to estimate micronutrient intake and adequacy worldwide. They found that 5 billion people do not consume enough iodine (so much for iodized salt!), vitamin E, and calcium. At least half of the world does not consume enough folate, iron, and vitamin C. We still have a long way to go to ensure people get access to nutrient-dense food products.

  • Yi Yang and colleagues recently published a paper in Science on how climate change could amplify the environmental impacts of agriculture. They found that not only will it do so, but it will also reduce the efficacy of agrochemicals and their loss into ecosystems and increase soil erosion and pests. This will reduce productivity, leading to land expansion and clearing to grow more food inefficiently, threatening biodiversity and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. They nicely demonstrate the interconnected feedback loops.

  • Speaking of climate change and Science magazine, a fascinating article examining climate policies that achieved significant greenhouse gas emission reductions. What an undertaking. Between 1998 and 2022, they examined 1500 climate policies across 41 countries. They found 63 successful policy interventions that reduced emissions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes of CO2. It is a shame they did not examine agri-food policies. Pricing, regulation, and subsidies had different impacts across sectors, but bundling of policy interventions greatly mattered. Important lessons for food-climate policy.

  • A new study in Lancet analyzed dietary questionnaires from more than 200,000 adults in the United States to examine their consumption of ultra-processed foods and related it to their chance of developing cardiovascular disease. They found that those who consumed the most ultra-processed foods were 11% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and 16% more likely to develop coronary heart disease compared to those who consumed the least amount of ultra-processed foods. Which foods were the worst offenders? Sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meat, poultry, and fish (e.g. bacon, hot dogs, breaded fish products). But still, some worry that demonizing foods can be stigmatizing.

  • I am totally biased here, but my colleague Shauna Downs just published a paper in Appetite that examined meat (red, unprocessed, and poultry) and seafood consumption patterns, the factors influencing their consumption, and how these differed based on socioeconomic variables among a US population. One interesting finding is that critical factors influencing red meat reduction were health and price, while environmental sustainability and animal welfare were less important, particularly among certain socio-demographic groups. She also wrote this piece on how communities along the Mekong River in Cambodia are seeing their food access shrink as the climate worsens.

Other nibbles:

  • Did you know methane is getting rising faster than ever? No wonder with the massive demand for meat.

  • The European Food Trails project just released a Food in Cities podcast in collaboration with Slow Food. I'm looking forward to listening.

  • Speaking of podcasts, we at the Columbia Climate School’s Food for Humanity Initiative are starting our own podcast, the Food Pod for Humanity. It will be a limited series on topics highlighting the interdependencies of climate change and food systems. The first series is on food waste.

  • Speaking of Columbia’s Climate School, check out this inspirational story about one of our new students from South Sudan.

  • World Wildlife Fund’s new Great Food Puzzle interactive site is pretty awesome.

  • The Atlantic published a report saying that we are a country of snacking, and less on eating wholesome meals. Gee, I wonder who encouraged that?

And just on a personal note, I have always loved These Days by Jackson Browne. I was so happy to see the NYT highlight the song. As I age, lyrics like this just hit me right in the gut: “Don’t confront me with my failures/I have not forgotten them.” Beautiful, and written when he was just 16.

Food Bytes: Aug 2024 Edition

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

It’s been a while, well, the whole summer, since I have written a Food Bytes blog. This summer was full of guilt-free laziness, ice cream eating, and beach combing. Witness the delicious vanilla Mr. Softee cone. On those sticky, hot, humid dog days of summer in NYC when nothing seems to be going right, this will do me just fine. But ketchup-inspired ice cream? That’s a hard no for me. Oh, but there was plenty of consumption of this on those long summer nights and some earlier “draft”ernoons. Pizza always comes to mind when discussing NYC and food in the same breath. Did you know NYC has gone through 4 evolutions of pizza making? Forgeddaboudit. Call me crazy, but I am still focused on the first evolution, and I’m stickin’ to it.

We saw lots of good music over the summer including DIIV at the beautiful Brooklyn Paramount, Jessica Pratt, OFF! (with the legendary Keith Morris), and Horse Lords in central LA. I also found myself not reading many scientific articles over the summer. Why do that to oneself when days can be spent lollygagging on grassy knolls? Instead,…wait for it…I read books! What a concept. But this week, I did manage to catch up on some light reading, and here are some highlights.

The New York Times has a new series of op-eds, “What to Eat on a Burning Planet.” A real picker-upper on the title alone. David Wallace Wells started the series with an op-ed on how food supplies will change and how climate change threatens the ability to continue to generate the yields needed to feed a growing population. There are a host of other good op-eds worth the read.

The Economist, a British weekly news magazine, hasn’t always given nutrition and food much attention, but lately, they seem to have changed their tune. I am a big fan of the Economist — this idea that you don’t know who the writers are behind the stories, their bravery in calling things as they see them, and, of course, the fantastic writing. They have paid homage to food and nutrition in three great articles.

  • They call for big food to contend with ultra-processed foods. They say, "If pressure from governments ratchets up, the food industry will have to do more than tweak its recipes or roll out new product lines. Companies would have to completely overhaul their manufacturing processes.”

  • They also focused on the idea that small investments in early child nutrition can make the world smarter and that undernutrition across the world persists. This is not new to those working in international nutrition, but it is nice to see broader attention to the topic.

  • At the same time, obesity is rising and seems unstoppable. The Economist argues that drugs (like the GLP-1 class) and taxes won’t be enough. The question is, why don’t we have more solutions that work, and why has no country been able to stop this trend? Don’t say it is willpower, please….

A lot is happening in the ongoing debates of livestock and meat production and consumption — one of the most juggernaut issues in food systems. Here are some highlights:

Source: Herzon et al 2024 Nature Food

  • The Good Food Institute—a nonprofit organization that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, particularly meat, dairy, and eggs—released a report that argues if Americans replaced 50% of their animal consumption (meat and dairy) with plant-based foods, 47.3 million fewer acres of cropland would be needed to grow that plant protein. Let’s see how that goes down with the livestock sector.

  • According to Vox, environmental NGOs help greenwash the livestock industry’s climate impact. They use the example of the World Wildlife Fund and their relationship with McDonalds who are part of a round table on sustainable beef (with WWF accepting millions from McDonalds to assist in the roundtable collaboration. Yikes.

  • More and more studies are better articulating the impacts of red meat consumption on non-communicable disease outcomes. This meta-analysis further confirms that a higher intake of red meat and processed meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes incidence. A microsimulation model estimated that a 30% reduction in both processed meat and unprocessed red meat intake could lead to 1,073,400 fewer occurrences of type 2 diabetes, 382,400 fewer occurrences of cardiovascular disease, 84,400 fewer occurrences of colorectal cancer, and 62,200 fewer all-cause deaths over a 10-year period among an adult US population.

  • The evidence is building…maybe leading to more statements such as this. The question is, how? These authors suggest downsizing livestock herds and for those that remain in existence, ensuring they are sustainable and present a framework (see figure above) for how sustainable livestock systems fit into a safe operating space.

  • And what we don’t talk about enough is animal and human welfare associated with our unlimited appetite for animal meats. Michael Holtz wrote an illuminating and devastating account about working in a Dodge City meatpacking plant during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. I also highlighted the issue of young immigrant teenagers working in dangerous conditions at slaughterhouses in a past Food Bytes post.

Food prices, cost, and affordability are hot topics these days. Kamala has made minimizing food price gouging part of her future economic plan if she were to become president-elect. Some disagree with her strategy. The FAO’s State of Food Insecurity Report released its latest data on food affordability. While the number has come down this year from 3.1 to 2.83 billion people who cannot afford a healthy diet, it is still shockingly high and inequitable across regions of the world. FAO says: “In 2022, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre-pandemic levels in the group of upper-middle- and high-income countries as a whole, while the group of low-income countries had the highest levels since 2017.” But still, food prices continue to rise, pushing up the cost of a healthy diet year on year. In 2022, costs went up 11% in just one year. A group out of IFPRI suggests that the cost and affordability of healthy diets need more investigation into their accuracy and if assumptions of these metrics skew what is actually affordable. Their analysis argues that the EAT-Lancet diet is not affordable for 2.13 billion people, not the 3.02 originally reported. I am not an economist or a specialist in this topic, so I cannot agree or disagree with these findings. However, I am a scientist, and opening debates and discussions on metrics is a healthy pursuit to get to the truth. In another paper published in Nature Food, authors analyze per capita budget shares for food and an additional 12 raw food categories, including ultra-processed food and beverages, across 94 countries from the period 1990 to 2019. They found that food expenditures are not the same worldwide, and low-income food demand does not necessarily mirror high-income demand. Of course, budget allocations align with income levels, food trade and production, and culture. Check out this figure to see how much it diverges across low to high-income countries.

Source: Liang et al 2024 Nature Food

A few other Bytes: This paper on the climate-food-migration nexus by Megan Carney is a doozy but so important. Hulsen et al. published a paper on how local food environments impact children’s diets. They did this work in Malawi and found significant differences between rural and urban food environments, and that, of course, access to more variety of foods in these markets has positive impacts on children’s diets. The New York Times has highlighted a study on tipping points that may just put the fear of god in you. Die-offs! Collapses! Ghostly coral reefs! Seriously, these are scary outcomes if we do nothing about climate and the science on tipping points has momentum. Speaking of tipping points, has Italy’s marine ecosystem reached one, and the result is blue crab invasions and infestations? In the worst-case scenario, tipping points could lead to massive destruction of precious ecosystems, food insecurity for billions, and, in some cases, famines. The world has witnessed cataclysmic famines in the past. The question remains as to why Gaza and Sudan have not been declared as famine states. NPR explains. Declaring a famine is not so simple…but it doesn’t mean inaction and complacency.

And if you need some recommendations on keeping up with the latest food systems news, if you don’t read and support Civil Eats, do so. If you were a fan of The Counter and were devastated when they closed shop, have no fear. Grist has come to the rescue, and their food reporting is awesome.

And for those of you who tear up every time you hear Gillian Welch’s Time (the Revelator), she and her partner, David Rawlings, have a new album out. It may just help you laze away the last days of summer. Enjoy!

Food Bytes: May 2024 Edition

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

Well…the semester is over, and Columbia went out with a bang. Despite the chaos and heartbreaking controversy that has ensued on campus, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed teaching this semester and getting to know all the Climate and Society Masters students at Columbia’s Climate School. What a pleasure and privilege it is to interact every day with the next generation of thinkers, leaders, and revolters. Teaching is all-consuming if you want to do right by the student. Thus, my blogging has been less frequent, and I missed the April Food Bytes. I don’t think I need any excuses as to why. But I did manage to get in a bit of reading, listening, and watching. Check out some Bytes that I consumed…

I read The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading by Dwight Garner in just a few days. If you love literature and consider yourself a gourmand, Garner nicely meshes the two worlds with humor and personal tidbits about his life. What a pleasure to read about his obsession with both food and books. I like this quote by the New York Times (which must have been strange for this reviewer to write, being that Garner is the book critic for the NYT), “Garner’s early appetite for everything from Bugles to blue crabs was matched by his equally wide-ranging appetite for literature, encompassing Miami Herald sports columns, scavenged copies of Oui magazine and the novels of Robert B. Parker.”

I listened to an eight-part series podcast, Fiasco, about the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic in America. It focuses on: “the early years of the crisis when a diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence. It looks at the mystery and missteps around identifying and treating a new, contagious disease, and what it took to get the public — and the government — to care.” While nothing related to food, it is such a fantastic and profoundly moving series that highlights the importance of engaging and mobilizing communities to advocate for their rights, particularly those who have been stigmatized and marginalized. It is a story of constancy. The food systems world could learn and adopt many lessons from this historic movement and what it means to fight for a cause when it threatens the very existence of life.

A few interesting reports have emerged and are worth the read. I will highlight three. First, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) published Land Squeeze. The report focuses on how farmland is being purchased for the purposes of what is called "green grabbing,” but they argue it is resulting in massive land inequities (see figure below). Much of the land is being used for extractive industries rather than agriculture. IPES-Food has become known for its criticism of the “go big or go home” approach to food systems, and I don’t blame them. The concentration of power is scary, to say the least, and frankly, I am not sure if we will see an end to this consolidation. Are there any examples of where David won against Goliath? Tobacco is one example — maybe — and some of the lessons on how to stymy the tobacco industry can be used in food systems, but at the same time, they are very, very different in scale, scope, and outcome. I will write about this more in a coming blog post on The Food Archive.

The second report, the World Resource Institute’s Towards Better Meat, is a fantastic report unpacking the pros and cons of organic, grass-fed, and conventional production of meat. [I am also a massive fan of Richard Waite. He was one of my favs to follow when I was on the good ol’ days of Twitter/X. Alas, Elon squashed all that.] In their analysis, they compare these management practices across a range of environmental, social, and economic factors across different animal systems - comparing chicken and eggs, beef, and other animal foods. Bottomline? Benefits depend on what outcome one is looking at and which animal system. Check out the figure below. It looks at “total carbon costs,” which include on-farm emissions as well as carbon opportunity costs. Interestingly, grass-fed, organic, and free-range beef and dairy production systems had higher overall climate impacts per gram of protein than conventional systems in more than 90% of cases. The WRI makes the claim that this is because of higher land use requirements. The whole report weighs these different outcomes and each system has strengths and trade-offs. There is no “silver bullet” system, sorry to say.

The last report is the World Bank’s Recipe for a Livable Planet. It is their answer to the various 1.5-degree roadmaps emerging. If FAO did one, why can’t they? Yet, why do I feel the World Bank is always two steps behind… One interesting message that you hear less about, but the Bank did some analysis, is that 3/4 of food system emissions come from low-and middle-income countries, including 2/3 from middle-income countries (see figure below). They argue that “mitigation action has to happen in these countries as well as in high-income countries to make a difference.” They argue for three actions: repurposing subsidies to encourage low emissions, (2) using digital technologies to improve information for measurement and reporting, and (3) leveraging institutions that include smallholder farmers, women, and Indigenous groups, “who are at the front lines of climate change.” Nothing too new here in these recommendations, but I am sure there will be some controversies kicked up with regard to middle-income countries needing to accelerate their mitigation potentials.

That’s all for now folks. I hope everyone has a relaxing and safe summer. It’s going to be a scorcher. I leave you with my Summertime Sadness playlist to breeze and eaze you into this cruel summer.

That banks the river for which it's named

Rivers are special. These ribbon-like bodies of water cut through topography, shaping and shifting the landscape around them.

rivers begin where they end
if 1 considers rain + jet stream winds
look deeper into grainy sands
the sublimation from the wind-swept lands ever reach sea — Jordan, Sound Furies

My partner and I have always been drawn to rivers and try to live or be near them. We currently reside quite close to the great Hudson River (~500 km long), where we can amble through Riverside Park and enjoy the views. We are so obsessed with rivers that we made a double album as the Sound Furies dedicated to rivers, entitled “Tributaries.” One of my favorite songs from the album is Columbia.

We are not alone in our obsession with all things river. There are many songs inspired by rivers in the archives of rock-n-roll. Al Green just wanted someone to take him to the river. Jimmy Cliff had many rivers to cross. Joni Mitchell longed to have a river to skate away on. Sam Cooke was born by a river. Tina fearlessly rolled on a river (thanks for the original CCR). I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Rivers mean something to many of us.

It is not just music. There are a plethora of movies about rivers. African Queen, A River Runs Through It, and one of the best movies ever made which spends most of its time on the river, Apocalypse Now. In the movie, the French woman living on the plantation says to Willard (played by Martin Sheen), “Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?” Willard answers, “Yeah, 'cause it's always moving.” The best scene, though, is the conversation between Willard, who has come to assassinate the unhinged Colonel Kurtz (played by Brando). They converse about the Ohio river and a gardenia plantation.

What was up with all those movies in the 90s about dead bodies being found along river banks — Short Cuts, Stand By Me, A River’s Edge, and of course, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks? We Gen Xers were so demented.

Supposedly, there are 165 major rivers around the world, but no one really knows the real number. The five longest rivers in the world are the Nile, which starts in Uganda and moves north (odd, right?) to Egypt, the Amazon-Ucayali-Apurimac in South America, the Mississippi-Missouri-Red Rock in the U.S., the Yangtze in China, and the Yenisey-Baikal-Selenga in northern Asia. The Nile is the longest, topping out at 6,650 km. The Danube in Europe flows through 10 countries. The Congo River is the deepest. Rivers serve all sorts of purposes. They provide water, food, habitats, transportation, and recreation, to name just a few purposes. Rivers are really important for food. Fish and other aquatic creatures that live in rivers are consumed. Food is traded on and transported by rivers. Food is grown in or around river banks. Water from rivers irrigates crops.

We wrote a paper on the dynamism and multifaceted nature of rivers as 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. In the figure below, we showed the elements of multidimensional riverine food environments.

The paper nicely describes why river ecosystems are so critical. “Rivers can be described as nutrient highways across the earth’s surface, transporting sediment and water, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, and connecting and storing immense biodiversity through aquatic life. The flow and transportation of sediment create environments for cultivation (e.g. rice farming), with river deltas being one of the world’s most agriculturally productive areas. Rivers support approximately 1/3 of all global food production, and an estimated 70% of freshwater from rivers is used for agriculture.”

There are so many challenges with rivers. The first issue is environmental: climate change, environmental degradation, and pollution are vastly changing these waterscapes - altering their composition and flow. The second issue is overfishing and overallocation, meaning the building of dams for electricity, are altering the riverine ecosystems and marine life and creating water shortages and river connectivity, respectively. As for rivers that cut across multiple countries, who governs these waters and decides who can build dams and where? We see those challenges in large rivers such as the Mekong — where China is building dams upstream impacting many Cambodian and Vietnamese living downstream. We also see this with the Nile, in which Ethiopia is building damns to electrify the nation, which could have massive impacts on irrigation systems for Egyptian agriculture. The third issue is that while rivers transport and contain food, they also bring other things, like diseases and unhealthy foods deep into river communities. This New York Times article discusses how the Amazong brought the COVID-19 pandemic into the far reaches of the Amazon forest.

The spread of covid in just a few months during the pandemic along the Amazon waterways. Source: NYT

“The Amazon River is South America’s essential life source, a glittering superhighway that cuts through the continent. It is the central artery in a vast network of tributaries that sustains some 30 million people across eight countries, moving supplies, people and industry deep into forested regions often untouched by road. But once again, in a painful echo of history, it is also bringing disease.”

The Amazon also carries highly processed foods. According to this article, multinational companies like Nestle had river barges that delivered junk foods to isolated communities in the Amazon basin.

There is also the issue of rivers flooding, damaging infrastructure and harming humans and animals in their way. And now, we are experiencing rivers above us — atomospheric rivers — corridors of concentrated water vapor in the atmosphere that wreak havoc. What the hell?!

World WildLife Fund’s solutions for sustainable rivers

I can’t recommend enough the documentary “A River’s Last Chance,” about the Eel River. It delves into the history of how this river has been managed, or lack thereof. The Eel River is in Northern California and has been vulnerable to overfishing of its salmon, logging, floods, droughts, and dams. While the wild salmon population is trying to recover, new cash crops—weed and wine — threaten the salmon once more. It is quite a story of a river struggling to survive.

World Wildlife Fund has a fantastic initiative, Rivers of Food, in which they propose a four-pronged solution towards a more sustainable future for rivers and food security.

Let’s hope rivers can be saved as they provide a vital lifeline for nature, animals, and humans. They are also just so romantic and atmospheric. We used to dwell right near the Tiber when we lived in Rome. It was so magical. The way the early morning light hit the surface of the water, the banks, and the bridges. During the late summer months of the year, the starlings would circle around the Tiber, before settling in for the night in the treetops along the river banks. In Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Belleza, the early morning light on the Tiber is captured so beautifully below.

Food Bytes: March 2024 Edition

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

“All of my work is directed against those who are bent on blowing up the planet.” —William S. Burroughs

That just about summarizes it for me. I can’t even begin to fathom what the world will look like here in the U.S. come Jan 1st 2025 (along with the other 4.2 billion people voting for their democracy this year), but I will continue to hang onto the small glimmers of hope for a humanity that doesn’t want to watch the world burn. On a lighter note, let’s get into some food bytes.

Lately, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts while walking to work. There are a few that are worth a listen. Although an older podcast, Everything is Alive is witty. It brings to life everyday objects. For you foodies out there, Louis the Can of Soda (“That's my evaluation of humanity. A chronic search for potency”), Jes the Baguette, and Vinnie the Vending Machine are pretty hilarious. I also listened to the BBC Food Programme’s Herb and Spice Scam. Yes, your oregano is full of olive leaves…and the BBC Food Chain’s Why We Love Dumplings. First off, the host, Ruth Alexander, has the most soothing voice. She really should do some nighttime readings on the Calm app. Second, dumplings hold a unique place in society. Every country/culture has them as part of their staple cuisine: gyozas, wontons, ravioli, pierogis, samosas, khinkali, and empanadas, to name a few (see the photo of these Cuban varietals I recently took at the Isla Diner in Hoboken). Just delish.

As I have mentioned in past blogs, there is the 6-part Barbeque Earth by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is just outstanding. I highly recommend it. Stay tuned for more podcasts by Ambrook Research’s The Only Thing That Lasts podcast on America’s farmlands, indeed a very precious resource. The first episode wondered if farmland is running out in the U.S., spurred by fears that Bill Gates is gobbling it all up (he owns about a quarter of a million acres of it). The second episode dives into the creation of U.S. farmland.

As far as major media stories go, this long read by the New York Times on India’s sugar cane fields and their impacts on families, particularly women and children, is disturbing and tragic. Worth the read before you open that next can of ice-cold Coke.

Lately, many reports have pulled together evidence on the links between climate and nutrition. Per my usual spiel, there has been so much research over decades showing the various links between climate change, variability, extreme weather events, and deleterious nutrition outcomes, but it sometimes takes a large-scale report to draw attention to the topic. Here are just a handful that have come out in recent months:

  • Emergency Nutrition Network’s report: Exploring new, evolving and neglected topics at the intersection of food systems, climate change and nutrition: a literature review.

  • Stronger Foundations for Nutrition’s report: An Evidence Narrative on Climate Change and Nutritious Foods. They also put out a database of climate-nutrition evidence. I was happy to see our team listed with other great researchers, such as Marco Springmann, Sam Myers, Andy Haines, and Matthew Smith.

  • ANH Academy’s evidence map: Intersections of climate change with food systems, nutrition, and health: an overview and evidence map.

Speaking of food and climate reports, a few are worth your time.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a report in the last two weeks titled The Unjust Climate: Measuring the impacts of climate change on the rural poor, women, and youth. The report highlights how the climate crisis is particularly unjust for rural women. This statistic stood out: A 1° C increase in long-term average temperatures is associated with a 34% reduction in the total incomes of female-headed households relative to those of male-headed households. Extreme weather events also undermine the incomes of the female-headed households relative to those of male-headed households. Check out this figure on the right that shows just one additional day of extreme temps or precipitation is associated with 1.3% and 0.5% reduction in income for women. This may not seem like a lot, but this reduction translates to an annual income loss of 8% with heat stress and 3% with floods.

A new report by Helen at Harvard Law School, Options for a Paris-compliant livestock sector, argues that global emissions from livestock must drop by 61% by 2036 to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement. One of the authors, my colleague Matthew Hayek at NYU, is also an author of a Nature Food paper just published that criticizes the FAO’s Achieving SDG 2 without breaching the 1.5 °C threshold: A global roadmap report, arguing that the FAO doesn’t sufficiently address the shift away from the production and consumption of animal-sourced foods - particularly livestock. While the FAO report does set some milestones to reduce emissions and the growth of livestock, according to the authors of the paper, FAO doesn’t really articulate how. They also criticized FAO’s aquaculture target. FAO’s history with livestock is long and sorted. If you want to read a fascinating controversy about another report on livestock FAO produced in 2006 (Livestock’s Long Shadow), check out this piece by the Guardian. Le sigh…Can’t we all just get along?

On a lighter note, and maybe less controversial food system topic (famous last words…), the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils — also known as VACS (no, this is not a vaccine project) — a project initiated by Carey Fowler in the U.S. State Department, has released its first report and list of 20 potential crops to expand on (see figure on the left). In full disclosure, I worked with Cynthia Rosenzweig’s AgMIP team here at Columbia and NASA GISS on some of the findings. Who doesn’t love traditional, indigenous, neglected crops — now called opportunity crops — and their potential for Africa and the world? AgMIP also released an awesome dashboard called the VACS Explorer to map the resilience of these crops in the face of climate change.

Speaking of data, I am a big fan of Our World In Data’s (OWID) Hannah Ritchie, who has a new book out, Not the End of the World. I hope she’s right. I am not sure how she can muster up any positivity looking at the data - as they say, the data don’t lie!! She consistently feeds the OWID with amazing food and climate data. Her latest is on weather forecasting. She highlights their importance but also how the quality is improving to predict extreme events and trigger early warning systems better. At Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society — also known as IRI — we have been generating these types of data for decades that serve many sectors, including agriculture, public health and energy sectors.

It is so hard to keep up with the scientific literature on food systems these days. There is just so much evidence being generated. This paper stood out a bit for me. It tries to establish a strong link between biodiversity loss and our diets. They argue, and I agree, that most eaters don’t have a clue about the potential impacts of their diets on the rich biodiversity that we are losing around the world. In the paper, they estimate the biodiversity footprint of 150 popular dishes worldwide. Of course, beef dishes have high biodiversity footprints = not good…as compared to vegetarian dishes, but there are exceptions! The authors noted that chana masala has a high biodiversity footprint. Drats. The figure below shows the top 20 dishes with the highest biodiversity footprint across three different biodiversity indicators — species richness, threatened species richness, and range rarity using different scenarios for the way food is grown/raised: a) feedlot-grown locally produced, b) feedlot-grown globally produced, c) pasture-grown locally produced, and d) pasture-grown globally produced. Plot symbols and colors represent diet and dishes’ region of origin, respectively. Ingredients in the bar chart correspond to the main ingredient in terms of weight in a dish in the top 20 dishes with the highest biodiversity footprints. Looks like green chile stew fairs a bit better than other dishes. Whew!

Top 20 biodiversity footprint dishes from around the world

A few more fun tidbits for this month’s Food Bytes. Did anyone watch the Oscars? It was pretty boring with Oppenheimer dominating, but I did notice that everyone walking the red carpet looked especially thin and fit. Celebrities are known for trying the latest fad diets and having substantive budgets for expensive trainers and personal chefs, but clearly, this was the Oscars on Ozempic. Let’s see how this all plays out, but I do fear there are reasons to be skeptical about the weight loss drug’s long-term impacts on health. As always, The Maintenance Phase podcast is spot on with its Ozempic episode. Dary Mozaffarrian, former Dean of the nutrition policy school at Tufts, wrote an interesting piece in JAMA arguing that a food-as-medicine intervention should be paired with Ozempic prescriptions. And then there is Oprah who continues to shape the conversation about weight loss and her latest journey using these GLP-1 agonist drugs.

While we are on the topic of celebrity nonsense, Erewhon (nowhere spelled backwards) is just plain silly. But celebrities and the “LA set” flock to it in droves. This piece by Kerry Howley of the Cut is so worth the read: “Erewhon’s Secrets: In the 1960s, two macrobiotic enthusiasts started a health-food sect beloved by hippies. Now it’s the most culty grocer in L.A.” The New York Times claims it’s the “hottest hangout.” Yes, this is the place where Kourtney Kardashian has branded her 'Poosh Potion Detox Smoothie’ for a cool $22 and Saba balsamic vinegar costs $50. With the fiasco of Wegmans opening in NYC (with massive queues around several blocks), let’s hope Erewhon doesn’t decide to come eastward.

Source: https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=16-P13-00020&segmentID=5

Speaking of hippies, I have been working on a book about how America’s 1960s counterculture movement used food systems to ignite a social revolution and ultimately failed. The American counterculture movement, born during the fertile but tumultuous late 1960s to early 1970s, recognized a similar looming storm and tried to redirect its path. The mounting political, social, and cultural challenges (limitations on natural resources, industrialization, pollution, inequities, population growth) influenced an entire generation to work toward rebuilding food systems into a more ethical “ecological utopia” of balance, stability, and food consciousness. Back-to-the-land communes, food co-ops, the first Earth Day, Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program, Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Worker’s Association, and the Diggers’ free food experiments in the Haight Ashbury were all attempts to break the status quo and democratize food systems. They approached food and environmental issues as foundations for building an ideal society while simultaneously providing nourishment and wellness for the human population and the planet. They radicalized and politicized food as a medium for social revolution. While some of their individual battles prevailed, their revolution was defeated. Why did their vision fail, and why did we not heed their canary calls when we still had a fighting chance to fix the system? This story is about the short-lived influence of the counterculture hippie movement, why they clung to food and environment as their raison d’etre, and why we’re still fascinated by their history but struggle to learn from it in these darker, more dangerous times. So, stay tuned as I continue to scroll away.

Reminds me of one of the Sound Furies song’s we recorded a few years ago, V-Dubbed.

in the back of a ’66 VW
for a last cigarette can i bug u?
in her birthday suit under the trenchcoat
Patty Hearst doubled as her scapegoat

Food Bytes: February 2024 Edition

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

As I write this, snow is floating across New York City, deeply settling me into a wintry, sedate state. Lately I have been dreaming about feeling the sun on my skin, eating juicy peaches, and wearing flip-flops…I do this every year. I yearn for crisp, cold days during the dog days of summer, but then, the blue winters come along, I long for heat, long days, and not having to spend 20 minutes layering clothes just to get out the door. That said, nothing beats homemade, hearty soups that my better half cooks up that last for several meals and doubling down on double-feature movies in the evenings. Speaking of food, let’s get to what the food world has been up to this past month – there is a lot to cover.

Scientific papers

This paper, “Health-Environment Efficiency of Diets Shows Nonlinear Trends over 1990-2011” by Pan He is getting lots of traction. They developed an indicator and applied it, as Kate Schneider (lead author of the Food Systems Countdown paper) wrote, “that builds on long-observed correlates of increasing levels of development, that is, the co-occurrence of ‘bads’ (for example, rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from greater animal-source food consumption, rising risk of diet-related non-communicable disease) and the ‘goods’ (for example, the decline in child and maternal malnutrition, increased incomes and more education). With this health–environment efficiency metric, the authors sought to understand how efficiently food systems use environmental inputs to generate health outcomes.”

They show that as countries economically grow and “develop,” they tend to see improvements in health and nutrition outcomes (reductions in undernutrition). With continued development, they see animal-source food consumption increase, with concomitant environmental degradation. This is not surprising, but it is interesting to see this indicator used to prove further the nutrition transition and how critical it is to consider planetary health with human health through our food systems. The figure to the right shows the change in dietary efficiency along with socio-economic development.

Rachel Gilbert and colleagues (including my buddy, the great Will Masters) published a fantastic paper in World Development that looked at food imports and their retail prices across 144 countries. They found that lots of food is traded worldwide, and almost half face tariffs (at a rate of 6.7%). Which foods had the highest tariffs? Vegetables, fruits, and animal-sourced foods. Where? Low- and middle-income countries, but they only account for a small portion of the cost of the diet per day. Most of the food prices consumers pay are domestic value add-ons once the foods have arrived in the country. I think I got that right…

Although this paper came out in 2023, it is an important one by Matias Heino and colleagues. The paper shows the impacts of combined hot and dry extremes as well as cold and wet extremes on major crop commodity yields (of course…)— maize, rice, soybean, and wheat—between 1980 and 2009. They show that co-occurring extremely hot and dry events have globally consistent negative effects on the yields of all inspected crop types. Extremely cold and wet conditions reduce crop yields globally, too, although to a lesser extent, and the impacts are more uncertain and inconsistent. Check out the figure to the left.

Biodiversity is in free fall, which can impact both nature scapes and people. We know that agriculture and urbanization are two of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. This paper by Awaz Mohamed et al examined how much natural habitat is needed to ensure humans have access to the benefits of biodiversity, such as diverse food production (soil, pollination, etc.), high water quality, homeostatic climate regulation, and improved green spaces. They find that benefits significantly decline when habitat area falls below 20%–25% per km2, and 2/3 of agricultural and urban areas fall below this level globally.

Reports

The Food Systems Economic Commission finally came out. It was a long time coming. The report assessed one specific science-based transformation pathway for food systems, which could benefit both people and the planet. This pathway is called the Food System Transformation (FST). Estimates of those benefits, measured as reductions in the unaccounted costs of food systems, amount to at least 5 trillion USD per year. When the full effects of a global food system transformation on incomes are factored in, estimates of its benefits rise to 10 trillion USD annually. See the figure to the right that shows this power of transformation.

Podcasts

I listened to two really good podcasts this past week. The first is hosted by Ambrook Research (I highly recommend receiving their weekly newsletter). It is called The Only Thing That Lasts, and in the first episode, they delve into the potential loss of U.S. farmland (spurred by the fear that Bill Gates seems to be buying it all up).

The other podcast is Barbecue Earth, a six-part podcast about meat as a commodity, the powerful industry behind meat, and a major reason our planet is overheating. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosts it. The first focused on hogs…It will make you think twice about putting bacon on your egg cheese sandwich.

Media, Social and Otherwise

Eater has made life easier for you by guiding you where you should eat in 2024. Interestingly, neither New York nor London is mentioned. Good for them. But have no fear New Yorkers, this guy has been flaneuring around Gotham attempting to eat a meal representing every country in the world. He is almost there…

This will get some agronomists riled up. Here is a webinar hosted by the Rodale Institute (which has a certain world view of food systems) on the differences between organic versus conventional agriculture systems – and how these “stack up” from agronomics, carbon footprint, and economic perspectives. Guess what the conclusion is? :)

TV and movies

We have been watching season 4 of True Detective with Jody Foster and the awesome Kali Reis. It is filmed in a fictional town, Ennis, Alaska (although filmed in Iceland). It is assumed that we are in the far northern reaches of Alaska, where the community experiences complete darkness. It is inspired by North Slope Borough, a town on the northernmost point of Alaska, approximately 50% of which comprises indigenous populations. In the show, the water is contaminated (likely from mining operations), but of course, I always notice the diets. There are lots of highly processed, packaged foods, which makes some sense because of the remoteness. In real life, in many of these indigenous communities, their traditional diets are healthy but are disappearing. Much work has been done to understand how diets have changed in the northern territories of Canada and Siberia. In Northern Alaska, among the Inupiat, the Yup’ik, and other traditional communities, many elderly are trying to preserve their traditional diets. Still, conserving these dietary patterns is getting harder and harder for various reasons.

Art Meets Food

Curious to know the most iconic food paintings? Check this out. The Normal Rockwell one is just downright creepy, but I always have time and space for Edward Hopper (who lived down the road from one of Columbia University’s campuses in Nyack, New York).

 The Clash has a song, “Lost in the Supermarket.” It’s a great song, and I think many of us can relate when entering these goliath spaces meant to nourish us. As Joe Strummer sang,

I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for a special offer
A guaranteed personality

Last thoughts

Our good friend Cheryl Palm passed away this past month from a rare and devastating disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. She was a giant in the world of food systems and made massive contributions to land-use change, degradation and rehabilitation, and ecosystem processes. Here is a lovely tribute from our Earth Institute friends at Columbia University. I love this photo of her in her younger years, full of life. That is how I choose to remember her.

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: 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.