Data-driven personalized nutrition (PN) can address the complexities of food systems in megacities, aiming to enhance food resilience. By integrating individual preferences, health data and environmental factors, PN can optimize food supply chains, promote healthier dietary choices and reduce food waste. Collaborative efforts among stakeholders are essential to implement PN effectively.

Mouthfeel occurs at macro, cellular and molecular scales. Biophysical approaches, including atomic force microscopy, offer tools to explore the mechanisms of oral mechanosensation for informing food product development and outlining the definition of flavour.

The transition towards plant-based diets requires supportive market and policy instruments. This study investigates how and the extent to which public funds support animal agriculture by tracking subsidy flows related to the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy across global food supply chains.

A lack of systematized information on existing agri-environmental policies poses challenges for research and practice. A new database with more than 6,000 agri-environmental policies implemented over the past six decades around the world helps fill the gap. This information enables the extraction of valuable insights for policymakers, academics and businesses.

Estimates of greenhouse gas emissions related to food consumption typically consider ingredients, rather than final dishes. This study combines over 500 real-life restaurant menu dishes with data on 170 million consumed meals in China, highlighting the potential of consumers to mitigate climate change through modifications in their eating patterns.

The conventional cocoa value chain has important environmental, nutritional and socio-economic implications. This study presents a chocolate formulation that combines the cocoa pod endocarp and pulp juice to create a sweetening gel that replaces refined sugar, offering improved nutritional value and reduced environmental impact while also contributing to income diversification for smallholder farmers.

The production of ammonia-based nitrogen fertilizers, key to food production, is highly concentrated and therefore susceptible to price volatility and supply chain disruptions. This study examines the cost-competitiveness of a decentralized ammonia industry with low-carbon ammonia production using small modular technologies, such as electric Haber–Bosch or electrocatalytic reduction.

The food system of urban agglomeration undergoes continuous transitions and poses changing pressure to the environment, especially in terms of nitrogen (N) pollution. This study highlights the decreased N use efficiency and intensified local N pollution in the context of uneven agricultural contraction in urban agglomeration and reveals how cities can leverage synergies for coordinated N pollution mitigation.

Greenhouses are quickly proliferating in response to the world’s increasing demand for food, but information on their precise location, distribution and extent remains limited in many countries. This Analysis combines global very-high-resolution satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to address this knowledge gap, showing a dramatic increase in greenhouse coverage in the Global South.

Harvest from inland recreational fisheries are estimated, demonstrating the importance of this food source for nutrition and economic value in food systems that are vulnerable to climate change.

The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unprecedented in terms of the share of the population experiencing acute food insecurity and famine and the speed of the onset of the crisis. Research can help understand and anticipate the long-term impacts of the conflict on people and livelihoods, design more effective humanitarian support systems and identify options for creating resilient post-conflict livelihoods.

Current narrow views of what constitutes evidence have left blind spots in food system decision-making. Yet, alternative ways of facilitating the production and exchange of transdisciplinary knowledge enable key lessons for more equitable and informed policy processes.

Well-designed policies can catalyse food systems transformation, whereas poorly designed ones may perpetuate and even aggravate the food crisis.

Hybrid intelligence — arising from the sensible, targeted fusion of human minds and cutting-edge computational systems — holds great potential for enhancing the sustainability of agriculture. Leveraging the combined strengths of both collective human and artificial intelligence helps identify and stress-test pathways towards the reconciliation of biodiversity and productivity.