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FOOD POLICY

Overlooked benefits of a staple food transition

China’s potato policy, introduced to improve food security, shows that substituting staples with alternative crops, though rarely the focus of dietary advice for planetary health, can also reduce the environmental impacts of food.

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Fig. 1: Potato production in China.

Gang Huang, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (a); Xueshan Shen, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (b); Xue Zou, Mianyang Academy of Agricultural Sciences (c)

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Correspondence to Laura Scherer.

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Scherer, L., Huang, J. Overlooked benefits of a staple food transition. Nat Food 2, 557–558 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00324-7

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