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: 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%!

2019: The year of food and nutrition reports!

2019 was an interesting year in the food and nutrition space.

The Lancet had food on its mind this year with THREE Commissions/Series:

• Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

• The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission report

• The Double Burden of Malnutrition

The EAT-Lancet Commission made the biggest “footprint” and spurred much debate and controversy, and pissed some people off. Good. That is exactly what it was meant to do. This along with the Syndemic made the Altmetrics top 100 papers of 2019. Cool.

The Global Burden of Disease finally published a solo paper on diets as a risk factor. That too made the Altmetrics top 100 list.

A slew of other reports on food, planet, and people came out this year. See the image below which doesn’t capture everything. They all pretty much say the same thing: We need to transform our food system if we want to save ourselves and the planet that we live on. We cannot disentangle the two. We depend on each other. It won’t be easy. The stakes are high and so are the challenges (like urban and population pressure). It will take significant, synergistic political will and investment. We are running out of time. That is the gist.

The Global Nutrition Report and Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement churned on to keep the momentum, largely in the undernutrition space, moving.

We saw some neglected areas get more attention this year. Fish, plant-based burgers, older children and adolescents. The Nobel Prize went to two stellar development economists whose research has informed our thinking on poverty, and how we can reduce it. But of course, with a dose of caution.

The Committee on Food Security is in the process of crafting the Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition. Regional consultations took place all year, and a draft is now out for review. If you are interested in providing written feedback on Draft One, you can do so by sending comments to cfs@fao.org by February 5, 2020. You can find all the info here.

This was the year of reports. Let’s make 2020 the year of action. We have a lot of evidence of what to do and how to do it. Many of us have written about it in ways in an attempt to get the attention of politicians. Now, we need to take what is written on paper and translate that into changes that matter for people. We need to vote for policymakers that care about these issues at the local level. Let’s push to make food, climate, and health a part of their campaigns, and give them the opportunity to take ownership of the issues.

We also need to think about politics outside our hometowns. We have seen some major shifts in the global political machinery of how we relate to each other and our willingness to participate as global citizens. Some of the heavy hitters, such as the U.S., will continue on its downward spiral into irrelevance, with the UK following close behind. But until they completely make themselves obsolete, their decisions, unfortunately, matter for the world, as we witnessed with the shoulder-shrugging at the COP 25 negotiations in Spain. Another year, lost.

But I am a cautious optimist. Well…let’s not push our luck here. Maybe more of a realist. We have the Tokyo 2020 moment to increase investments for nutrition (which are currently dismal). We will be half-way through the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition and 1/3 through the Sustainable Development Goals (not sure what this means, but hey). Derek Byerlee and I wrote about how far we have come and what achieving SDG2 means for the world. We have the Committee on Food Security hopefully approving the Voluntary Guidelines mentioned above. And we always have COP 26, to stir up a miracle to save the planet. These global moments are important, but not enough.

This is what I plan to do in 2020:

1. I am going to take a look in my own backyard to make changes (and maybe stop flying around the world, thinking I am saving it).

2. I will vote with my fork and the dire importance of the 2020 election in the U.S. cannot be understated.

3. I will work more with people and less with paper – i.e. stop being involved in all these goddamn reports (that few read…).