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We found trade-offs among the environmental and animal welfare impacts of pig farms — those that had low greenhouse gas emissions typically had low land use but poor animal welfare and high antimicrobial use. Some farms performed well in all four impacts, but these farms were not consistently associated with any particular farm or label type.
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.
Cropland fragmentation poses a significant threat to agricultural sustainability in China. Rational crop layout is required for different ecological regions to manage the fragmented croplands.
Wild forage fish can provide nutrients essential for human health, yet some nutrients may be lost when forage fish are used as aquafeeds. Reallocating a third of food-grade forage fish towards direct human consumption can optimize seafood systems to deliver dietary nutrients for feed and food at different scales.
Returning agricultural organic residues to the soil is imperative for food security and carbon neutrality. We scaled up field findings using machine learning and found that the co-benefits of improved rice yield and reduced net carbon emissions can be realized with integrated management of organic residues and water worldwide.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the affordability of a healthy diet remains a pressing concern, recent research offers fresh insights into how food prices and income influence dietary quality. These insights provide a roadmap for targeted food and nutrition policy interventions.
Ambient temperature increases occurring under climate change could induce livestock heat stress, resulting in lambing losses and an estimated economic burden of up to Australian $166 million per annum to the Australian sheep industry.
Unlike nitrogen and phosphorus, potassium has received little attention despite being key to food security and ecosystem health. This Perspective proposes six actions concerning potassium deficiency, potash price volatility and potash mining.
Harmonization of front-of-pack nutrition labelling systems with national food-based dietary guidelines and the latest scientific evidence ensures the accuracy of the information provided to consumers. This Perspective presents the 2023 scientific committee’s update of the Nutri-Score nutrient profile model.
Food systems are complex and actions in one area are likely to have ripple effects in others. A newly proposed efficiency metric shows how well environmental resources used (and degraded) by food systems contribute to diet-related health outcomes.
An assessment of the supply chain reveals a rising trend in global food loss and waste, with uneven distribution across regions. Integrated interventions are necessary to reduce food waste and improve nutritional and environmental security.
The protein transition seeks to mitigate the adverse impacts of production and consumption of animal-sourced foods. Three diverse but partially overlapping narratives emerge from the scientific literature, addressing drivers of change, actionable pathways and visions for the future.
In vivo mercury demethylation by rice plants, involving neither light nor microorganisms, has major implications for human health and possibly even global mercury cycling.
We present an interdisciplinary conceptual framework of urban agriculture and synthesize its social–ecological effects across scales. Using those theoretical foundations, we proposed a multiphase developmental pathway for scaling up urban agriculture, including dynamics, processes, accelerators and feedback loops, which elucidated key considerations associated with achieving transformative change in urban regions.
Material flow and ecological network analysis of China’s coupled nitrogen and phosphorus flows shows trade-offs and synergies between food and energy systems.
Redesigning crop management practices for climate, crop and soil co-optimization has great potential to maintain high yields, mitigate social and environmental impacts, and support sustainable agricultural intensification.
The application of an integrated assessment framework in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates how anticipatory governance and decision support tools can help inform policy-making at the national level in the face of looming climate and nutrition crises.
Biofortification was first proposed as a low-cost, sustainable technique to enhance the nutritional value of staple food crops. This Perspective argues that both the micronutrients and the types of crop biofortified need to expand under rapid dietary change and proposes strategies to integrate biofortification into the global food system.
