Cocoa fruits

Our May issue is here!

Earth’s feeding capacity, food spoilage monitoring, Buddhist perspectives on cultivated meat, animal welfare in the EU, co-benefits of low-carbon diets, China’s rice under extreme rainfall… and more.

Announcements

  • Food systems and COVID-19

    Get in touch to meet the journal editors, discuss your work and find out more about Nature Food.

  • Sustainable development

    How can cellular agriculture contribute to sustainable food systems? A panel of experts considers cellular agriculture from perspectives of environmental sustainability, food justice, corporate power, potential for greenwashing, virtue ethics, and scaling for impact. Watch here.

  • Burning off stubble for farming

    Food systems affect and are affected by climate change. Here, we bring together several articles published in Nature Food on climate risks and impact assessment, mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as ‘win-win’ solutions that may deliver both.

Nature Food is a Transformative Journal; authors can publish using the traditional publishing route OR via immediate gold Open Access.

Our Open Access option complies with funder and institutional requirements.

Advertisement

  • The indirect effects of adopting the EAT–Lancet diet in the wider economy—and what this means for key social and environmental indicators—require further exploration. Using a general equilibrium model and tracing physical biomass, this study reveals spillover effects of a dietary shift on food prices, wages, trade, land use, biomass production and greenhouse gas emissions.

    • Alessandro Gatto
    • Marijke Kuiper
    • Hans van Meijl
    Article
  • The exact location and extent of cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the world’s largest producers, remain unknown in spite of their social, economic and environmental relevance. New satellite-based high-resolution maps generated through a deep learning framework link cocoa cultivation with deforestation in protected areas and show that official reports underestimate the total planted area.

    • Nikolai Kalischek
    • Nico Lang
    • Jan D. Wegner
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Standard tests to determine food spoilage are costly and time consuming. A poly(styrene-co-maleic anhydride)-based sensor offers a low-cost alternative that can be linked to mobile phones for real-time spoilage analysis. The device was tested on chicken and beef samples under various storage conditions.

    • Emin Istif
    • Hadi Mirzajani
    • Levent Beker
    Article
  • The hidden costs of current diets, or the cost saving associated with the adoption of low-carbon diets, remain unknown. This study combines life cycle assessment and monetarization factors to quantify the indirect costs of nine global dietary change strategies which progressively reduce animal-sourced foods, including consumption-linked health burden from changes in diet-related disease risk.

    • Elysia Lucas
    • Miao Guo
    • Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Genome assemblies, genetic variations, and metabolome and metal ion profiles were generated for diverse pigmented Asian rice varieties. An early maturing, shorter-stature black rice variety was created using CRISPR–Cas9-mediated genome editing, providing insights for improving Asian pigmented rice.

    • Khalid Sedeek
    • Andrea Zuccolo
    • Magdy M. Mahfouz
    Brief CommunicationOpen Access
  • Individuals’ food choices are typically based on recipes, not specific ingredients. This study compares almost 600 dinner recipes from the UK, the USA and Norway in terms of healthiness and environmental impact—including adherence to dietary guidelines and aggregate health indicators, as well as greenhouse gas emissions and land use.

    • Aslaug Angelsen
    • Alain D. Starke
    • Christoph Trattner
    Article
    • Food consumption has triggered considerable quantities of greenhouse gas emissions at various stages of the food supply chain. Tracking food-related emissions along supply chains is key to systematically identify their sources, drivers and mitigation opportunities.

      • Chaopeng Hong
      • Shijie Gu
      News & Views
    • The links between food systems and gender-based violence (GBV) remain largely neglected in research and policy. Building on the analysis of GBV and systematic inequalities within food systems, as well as how specific food system contexts shape GBV risk, this Perspective proposes a five-point collaborative agenda to address GBV in food systems.

      • Lora Forsythe
      Perspective
    • Adopting healthier diets is key to ensure food security and can bring other benefits, but might also be associated with trade-offs. A new study reveals how the partial transition towards the EAT-Lancet diet by 2030 would affect food affordability, food loss and waste and other environmental indicators.

      • Maksym Chepeliev
      News & Views
    • A new high-resolution map of cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana allows for large-scale accurate studies of the impact of cocoa cultivation on the landscape and better understanding of priority areas where improvements of cultivation practices are needed.

      • Thibaud Vantalon
      • Louis Reymondin
      News & Views
    • A wireless miniaturized sensor can report a ‘spoiler alert’ via a mobile phone by detecting volatile biogenic amines that are produced by spoiled protein-rich foods, providing a feasible solution to identify and prevent food spoilage and promote food safety.

      • Naoji Matsuhisa
      News & Views