The importance of food systems and the environment for nutrition

Abstract

Global and local food system transformation is necessary in order to ensure the delivery of healthy, safe, and nutritious foods in both sustainable and equitable ways. Food systems are complex entities that affect diets, human health, and a range of other outcomes including economic growth, natural resource and environmental resiliency, and sociocultural factors. However, food systems contribute to and are vulnerable to ongoing climate and environmental changes that threaten their sustainability. Although there has been increased focus on this topic in recent years, many gaps in our knowledge persist on the relation between environmental factors, food systems, and nutritional outcomes. In this article, we summarize this emerging field and describe what innovative nutrition research is needed in order to bring about food policy changes in the era of climate disruption and environmental degradation.

Keywords: Anthropocene; COVID-19; climate disruption; environmental sustainability; food systems; planetary health; sustainable diets.

FIGURE 1

Conceptual framework for food systems and the environment. Environmental inputs such as soil and water quality, weather patterns, and temperature influence food systems through their impact on the production, storage, and transportation of food. This affects localized food environments—the place or places where consumers interact with the food system to buy and consume food—by influencing food availability, quality, safety, and affordability (23–25). Proximal outcomes of food systems include increased or minimized exposure to contaminants, diet quality, and food loss and waste. Each of these proximal outcomes affects both human and environmental health outcomes. Finally, a feedback loop exists in that environmental outcomes affect environmental inputs. GHG, greenhouse gas.

FIGURE 2

Roadmap for evidence at the intersection of food systems, the environment, and nutrition. An innovative program of food systems research draws from a range of methods, intervenes on multiple points throughout the food system, and embraces a diversity of goals that support and complement the traditional goal of improving nutritional status and health outcomes. Within each domain, the items are not intended to be hierarchical; the goal is to show that there are a range of complementary methods, points of intervention, and goals.