Chinese food is one of the most recognizable and widely consumed cuisines in the world. Almost no town on earth is without a Chinese restaurant of some kind, and Chinese canned, frozen, and preserved ...foods are available in shops from Nairobi to Quito. But the particulars of Chinese cuisine vary widely from place to place as its major ingredients and techniques have been adapted to local agriculture and taste profiles. To trace the roots of Chinese foodways, one must look back to traditional food systems before the early days of globalization.
Food and Environment in Early and Medieval Chinatraces the development of the food systems that coincided with China's emergence as an empire. Before extensive trade and cultural exchange with Europe was established, Chinese farmers and agriculturalists developed systems that used resources in sustainable and efficient ways, permitting intensive and productive techniques to survive over millennia. Fields, gardens, semiwild lands, managed forests, and specialized agricultural landscapes all became part of an integrated network that produced maximum nutrients with minimal input-though not without some environmental cost. E. N. Anderson examines premodern China's vast, active network of trade and contact, such as the routes from Central Asia to Eurasia and the slow introduction of Western foods and medicines under the Mongol Empire. Bringing together a number of new findings from archaeology, history, and field studies of environmental management,Food and Environment in Early and Medieval Chinaprovides an updated picture of language relationships, cultural innovations, and intercultural exchanges.
How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our ...health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address.
A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources.
A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.
"As population estimates for 2050 reach over 9 billion, issues of food security and nutrition have been dominating academic and policy debates. A total of 805 million people are undernourished ...worldwide and malnutrition affects nearly every country on the planet. Despite impressive productivity increases, there is growing evidence that conventional agricultural strategies fall short of eliminating global hunger, as well as having long-term ecological consequences. Forests can play an important role in complementing agricultural production to address the Sustainable Development Goals on zero hunger. Forests and trees can be managed to provide better and more nutritionally-balanced diets, greater control over food inputs – particularly during lean seasons and periods of vulnerability (especially for marginalised groups) – and deliver ecosystem services for crop production. However forests are undergoing a rapid process of degradation, a complex process that governments are struggling to reverse. This volume provides important evidence and insights about the potential of forests to reducing global hunger and malnutrition, exploring the different roles of landscapes, and the governance approaches that are required for the equitable delivery of these benefits. Forests and Food is essential reading for researchers, students, NGOs and government departments responsible for agriculture, forestry, food security and poverty alleviation around the globe."
Background
Frequent consumption of excess amounts of sugar‐sweetened beverages (SSB) is a risk factor for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and dental caries. Environmental ...interventions, i.e. interventions that alter the physical or social environment in which individuals make beverage choices, have been advocated as a means to reduce the consumption of SSB.
Objectives
To assess the effects of environmental interventions (excluding taxation) on the consumption of sugar‐sweetened beverages and sugar‐sweetened milk, diet‐related anthropometric measures and health outcomes, and on any reported unintended consequences or adverse outcomes.
Search methods
We searched 11 general, specialist and regional databases from inception to 24 January 2018. We also searched trial registers, reference lists and citations, scanned websites of relevant organisations, and contacted study authors.
Selection criteria
We included studies on interventions implemented at an environmental level, reporting effects on direct or indirect measures of SSB intake, diet‐related anthropometric measures and health outcomes, or any reported adverse outcome. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), non‐randomised controlled trials (NRCTs), controlled before‐after (CBA) and interrupted‐time‐series (ITS) studies, implemented in real‐world settings with a combined length of intervention and follow‐up of at least 12 weeks and at least 20 individuals in each of the intervention and control groups. We excluded studies in which participants were administered SSB as part of clinical trials, and multicomponent interventions which did not report SSB‐specific outcome data. We excluded studies on the taxation of SSB, as these are the subject of a separate Cochrane Review.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently screened studies for inclusion, extracted data and assessed the risks of bias of included studies. We classified interventions according to the NOURISHING framework, and synthesised results narratively and conducted meta‐analyses for two outcomes relating to two intervention types. We assessed our confidence in the certainty of effect estimates with the GRADE framework as very low, low, moderate or high, and presented ‘Summary of findings’ tables.
Main results
We identified 14,488 unique records, and assessed 1030 in full text for eligibility. We found 58 studies meeting our inclusion criteria, including 22 RCTs, 3 NRCTs, 14 CBA studies, and 19 ITS studies, with a total of 1,180,096 participants. The median length of follow‐up was 10 months. The studies included children, teenagers and adults, and were implemented in a variety of settings, including schools, retailing and food service establishments. We judged most studies to be at high or unclear risk of bias in at least one domain, and most studies used non‐randomised designs. The studies examine a broad range of interventions, and we present results for these separately.
Labelling interventions (8 studies): We found moderate‐certainty evidence that traffic‐light labelling is associated with decreasing sales of SSBs, and low‐certainty evidence that nutritional rating score labelling is associated with decreasing sales of SSBs. For menu‐board calorie labelling reported effects on SSB sales varied.
Nutrition standards in public institutions (16 studies): We found low‐certainty evidence that reduced availability of SSBs in schools is associated with decreased SSB consumption. We found very low‐certainty evidence that improved availability of drinking water in schools and school fruit programmes are associated with decreased SSB consumption. Reported associations between improved availability of drinking water in schools and student body weight varied.
Economic tools (7 studies): We found moderate‐certainty evidence that price increases on SSBs are associated with decreasing SSB sales. For price discounts on low‐calorie beverages reported effects on SSB sales varied.
Whole food supply interventions (3 studies): Reported associations between voluntary industry initiatives to improve the whole food supply and SSB sales varied.
Retail and food service interventions (7 studies): We found low‐certainty evidence that healthier default beverages in children’s menus in chain restaurants are associated with decreasing SSB sales, and moderate‐certainty evidence that in‐store promotion of healthier beverages in supermarkets is associated with decreasing SSB sales. We found very low‐certainty evidence that urban planning restrictions on new fast‐food restaurants and restrictions on the number of stores selling SSBs in remote communities are associated with decreasing SSB sales. Reported associations between promotion of healthier beverages in vending machines and SSB intake or sales varied.
Intersectoral approaches (8 studies): We found moderate‐certainty evidence that government food benefit programmes with restrictions on purchasing SSBs are associated with decreased SSB intake. For unrestricted food benefit programmes reported effects varied. We found moderate‐certainty evidence that multicomponent community campaigns focused on SSBs are associated with decreasing SSB sales. Reported associations between trade and investment liberalisation and SSB sales varied.
Home‐based interventions (7 studies): We found moderate‐certainty evidence that improved availability of low‐calorie beverages in the home environment is associated with decreased SSB intake, and high‐certainty evidence that it is associated with decreased body weight among adolescents with overweight or obesity and a high baseline consumption of SSBs.
Adverse outcomes reported by studies, which may occur in some circumstances, included negative effects on revenue, compensatory SSB consumption outside school when the availability of SSBs in schools is reduced, reduced milk intake, stakeholder discontent, and increased total energy content of grocery purchases with price discounts on low‐calorie beverages, among others. The certainty of evidence on adverse outcomes was low to very low for most outcomes.
We analysed interventions targeting sugar‐sweetened milk separately, and found low‐ to moderate‐certainty evidence that emoticon labelling and small prizes for the selection of healthier beverages in elementary school cafeterias are associated with decreased consumption of sugar‐sweetened milk. We found low‐certainty evidence that improved placement of plain milk in school cafeterias is not associated with decreasing sugar‐sweetened milk consumption.
Authors' conclusions
The evidence included in this review indicates that effective, scalable interventions addressing SSB consumption at a population level exist. Implementation should be accompanied by high‐quality evaluations using appropriate study designs, with a particular focus on the long‐term effects of approaches suitable for large‐scale implementation.
Reducing food losses and waste is considered to be one of the most promising measures to improve food security in the coming decades. Food losses also affect our use of resources, such as freshwater, ...cropland, and fertilisers. In this paper we estimate the global food supply losses due to lost and wasted food crops, and the resources used to produce them. We also quantify the potential food supply and resource savings that could be made by reducing food losses and waste. We used publically available global databases to conduct the study at the country level.
We found that around one quarter of the produced food supply (614kcal/cap/day) is lost within the food supply chain (FSC). The production of these lost and wasted food crops accounts for 24% of total freshwater resources used in food crop production (27m3/cap/yr), 23% of total global cropland area (31×10−3ha/cap/yr), and 23% of total global fertiliser use (4.3kg/cap/yr). The per capita use of resources for food losses is largest in North Africa & West-Central Asia (freshwater and cropland) and North America & Oceania (fertilisers). The smallest per capita use of resources for food losses is found in Sub-Saharan Africa (freshwater and fertilisers) and in Industrialised Asia (cropland). Relative to total food production, the smallest food supply and resource losses occur in South & Southeast Asia.
If the lowest loss and waste percentages achieved in any region in each step of the FSC could be reached globally, food supply losses could be halved. By doing this, there would be enough food for approximately one billion extra people. Reducing the food losses and waste would thus be an important step towards increased food security, and would also increase the efficiency of resource use in food production.
Display omitted
► Losses of food supply and related resources were studied at a global scale. ► Around 1/4 of the produced food (in terms of kcal) is lost in the food supply chain. ► 23–24% of total use of water, cropland and fertilisers are used to produce losses. ► Around half of the losses could be prevented with a more efficient supply chain. ► One billion extra people could be fed if food crop losses could be halved.
The future of food from the sea Costello, Christopher; Cao, Ling; Gelcich, Stefan ...
Nature (London),
12/2020, Letnik:
588, Številka:
7836
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Global food demand is rising, and serious questions remain about whether supply can increase sustainably
. Land-based expansion is possible but may exacerbate climate change and biodiversity loss, ...and compromise the delivery of other ecosystem services
. As food from the sea represents only 17% of the current production of edible meat, we ask how much food we can expect the ocean to sustainably produce by 2050. Here we examine the main food-producing sectors in the ocean-wild fisheries, finfish mariculture and bivalve mariculture-to estimate 'sustainable supply curves' that account for ecological, economic, regulatory and technological constraints. We overlay these supply curves with demand scenarios to estimate future seafood production. We find that under our estimated demand shifts and supply scenarios (which account for policy reform and technology improvements), edible food from the sea could increase by 21-44 million tonnes by 2050, a 36-74% increase compared to current yields. This represents 12-25% of the estimated increase in all meat needed to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050. Increases in all three sectors are likely, but are most pronounced for mariculture. Whether these production potentials are realized sustainably will depend on factors such as policy reforms, technological innovation and the extent of future shifts in demand.
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