Eradicating food insecurity is necessary for achieving global health goals. Liberal trade policies might increase food supplies but how these policies influence individual-level food insecurity remains uncertain. We aimed to assess the association between liberal trade policies and food insecurity at the individual level, and whether this association varies across country-income and household-income groups.
Background: Plant-based meat alternatives are developed to address consumer demands and sustainability of future food supply, and the market has grown exponentially in recent years. Although progresses have been made to construct plant protein-based fibers organoleptically comparable to a whole-muscle cut, it remains challenging to reproduce the hierarchical organization of muscle tissue known to contribute to the overall sensory profile. For now, the market strategies are largely focused on restructured or formed meat mimeticks.
Improving rice yield potential is crucial for global food security. Taoyuan, China, is famous worldwide as a special ecosite for ultrahigh rice yield. Climatological factors affecting this phenomenon have been identified, but the potential molecular processes and environmental mechanisms promoting ultrahigh yield remain mysteries.
Food exchange between human populations can mitigate the risk arising from variable food production. Networks of exchange vary according to context but tend to fall into a relatively small number of qualitatively different types, including altruism, reciprocity, and resource pooling. This apparent canalization raises the question of whether specific networks of food exchange exhibit features that allow them to persist in the longer term, and we address this question by using a model of food exchange among multiple populations.
Background: Fruits and vegetables are an excellent source of nutrients, with numerous health benefits. Most consumers are not meeting the daily recommended intake of fruits and vegetables. Yet, a significant amount of fruits and vegetables that is produced is wasted. There are opportunities to recover the wasted fruits and vegetables for manufacturing value-added products to improve the sustainability of healthy diets and reduce the environmental footprint.
At the 21st session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, COP21), a voluntary action plan, the ‘4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate’ was proposed under the Agenda for Action. The Initiative underlines the role of soil organic matter (SOM) in addressing the three-fold challenge of food and nutritional security, adaptation to climate change and mitigation of human-induced greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions. It sets an ambitious aspirational target of a 4 per 1000 (i.e.
The emerging insects-as-food industry is increasingly promoted as a sustainable alternative to other animal protein production systems. However, the exact nature of its environmental benefits are uncertain because of the overwhelming lack of knowledge concerning almost every aspect of production: from suitable species, their housing and feed requirements, and potential for accidental release.
The world food price crisis in 2007/08 has aroused worldwide attention to the global food price volatility and food self-sufficiency issues. This paper modelled the entire environment of food production and transaction from a holistic view by a Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus in order to reveal the hidden connections related to the food self-sufficiency issue, including the interdependencies of food production with its restraining factors (hybrid energy, hybrid water), other production sectors, and international exchanges.
One of the key Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by the United Nations (UN) aims by 2030 to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. Fertilizers will play a pivotal role in achieving that goal given that ~90% of crop production growth is expected to come from higher yields and increased cropping intensity. However, materials-science research on fertilizers has received little attention, especially in Africa.
Evaluations of food, energy and water (FEW) linkages are rapidly emerging in contemporary nexus studies. This paper demonstrates, from a food consumption perspective, the potential of life cycle thinking in understanding the complex and often “hidden” linkages between FEW systems. Our study evaluates the upstream virtual water and embodied energy in food consumption in the Tamar catchment, South West England, distinguishing between domestic production and imports origin.
