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Aquatic foods at the nutrition–environment nexus

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 1497–1498 (2023)Cite this article

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A recent analysis of the environmental footprint of the world’s food systems1 found that aquatic foods, which include all fish, shellfish and seaweeds that are farmed or harvested in marine or freshwater environments, supply only 1% of food produced globally but are responsible for 10% of cumulative environmental impacts of food production. This statistic obscures two vital facts about the role of aquatic foods in food systems: first, that while aquatic foods account for a small proportion of total food production, they are an important source of vital nutrients; and second, that while some aquatic foods place substantial pressure on environmental systems, there are hundreds of aquatic foods that offer highly sustainable options.

‘One per cent of food’ represents 1.3% of the total weight of production (B. Halpern, personal communication). While aquatic foods supply 1% of the weight of food in the global human diet, they are more important as concentrated sources of essential nutrients: minerals, vitamins and fatty acids2. The major food system challenge facing humanity is not how to provide sufficient calories: the world’s food system has succeeded in supplying calorie-rich, nutrient-poor foods at low cost3. This process has led to increasing prevalence of diet-based disease (for example, heart disease); an estimated 11 million deaths in 2017 were attributed to poor diets4. Simultaneously, micronutrient deficiencies are present in an estimated half of preschool-aged children and two-thirds of non-pregnant women globally5. Aquatic foods have crucial roles to play in addressing the ‘hidden hunger’ of malnutrition. By one estimate, well-managed aquatic food production could avert micronutrient deficiencies for 166 million people2.

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Fig. 1: Pressure per tonne related to calorie content and nutrient richness for each food group.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. S. Halpern for providing responses to our inquiries and for looking at an earlier draft of the manuscript. Funding for J.Z.K. is from the MAVA Foundation. Funding for J.P.L. is from The Builders Initiative. Funding for E.H.A. is from donors to the OneCGIAR trust fund, through the Resilient Aquatic Food Systems Initiative.

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  1. Center for Ocean Solutions, Woods Institute for the Environment, Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    J. Zachary Koehn & James P. Leape

  2. WorldFish, Bayan Lepas, Malaysia

    Edward H. Allison

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  1. J. Zachary Koehn
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  2. James P. Leape
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Correspondence to J. Zachary Koehn.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Michalis Hadjikakou for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Methodology, Supplementary Figures 1-3, Supplementary Table 1

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Koehn, J.Z., Leape, J.P. & Allison, E.H. Aquatic foods at the nutrition–environment nexus. Nat Sustain 6, 1497–1498 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01229-y

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