Special Issue "Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Health and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Adam Drewnowski
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Center for Public Health Nutrition, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3410, USA
Interests: nutrient profiling; diet quality; diet cost; environmental impact; social context; low- and middle-income countries; nutrition transition; population health
Prof. Timothy Griffin
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Jaharis Family Center for Biomedical and Nutrition Sciences, Tufts University, 150 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Interests: food systems; sustainable agriculture; nutrient cycling; soil health

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems would benefit from an in-depth examination of the four domains that underlie both healthy diets and sustainable food systems. Sustainable diets need to be nutrient-rich, affordable, socially acceptable, and with a low impact on the environment. Sustainable food systems need to be economically viable, provide value to society, and make optimum use of both human and natural resources, including land, water, and energy.

The four domains can be conceptualized as nutrition and health, economics, society, and the environment. Much of the existing literature on sustainable diets has emphasized the links between food production, human diets, and their impact on personal and population health and environmental impact, especially climate. At this time, most sustainability-related dietary guidelines still rely narrowly on evidence from the health and environmental domains. By comparison, social and economic components of healthy diets and sustainable food systems, for example, overall health and wellbeing, food access, cultural identity, gender equality, and sustainable economic development, continue to be overlooked.

An in-depth examination of the socioeconomic components of diets and food systems, including topics relevant to both high-income and low- and middle-income countries, would complement the existing literature and improve understanding of how to define sustainability. Systems-based approaches that consider the trade-offs and synergies among the four domains—applied in multiple contexts and across geographic locations—will advance this transdisciplinary field. This Special Issue includes papers by authors who are bridging gaps across the domains in new ways.

References:

Drewnowski A; Ecosystem Inception Team. The Chicago Consensus on Sustainable Food Systems Science. Front Nutr. 2018;4:74. Published 2018 Apr 25. doi:10.3389/fnut.2017.00074

Drewnowski A, Finley J, Hess JM, Ingram J, Miller G, Peters C. Toward Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems. Curr Dev Nutr. 2020;4(6):nzaa083. Published 2020 May 20. doi:10.1093/cdn/nzaa083

Fanzo J, Drewnowski A, Blumberg J, Miller G, Kraemer K, Kennedy E. Nutrients, Foods, Diets, People: Promoting Healthy Eating. Curr Dev Nutr. 2020;4(6):nzaa069. Published 2020 Apr 1. doi:10.1093/cdn/nzaa069

Nelson ME, Hamm MW, Hu FB, Abrams SA, Griffin TS. Alignment of Healthy Dietary Patterns and Environmental Sustainability: A Systematic Review. Adv Nutr. 2016;7(6):1005-1025. Published 2016 Nov 15. doi:10.3945/an.116.012567

Fanzo J, Davis C. Can Diets Be Healthy, Sustainable, and Equitable?. Curr Obes Rep. 2019;8(4):495-503. doi:10.1007/s13679-019-00362-0

Macdiarmid JI, Whybrow S. Nutrition from a climate change perspective. Proc Nutr Soc. 2019;78(3):380-387.doi:10.1017/S0029665118002896

Prof. Adam Drewnowski
Prof. Timothy Griffin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • health
  • nutrition
  • economics
  • society
  • environment
  • sustainable food systems

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Review

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Review
Data Integration for Diet Sustainability Analyses
Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 8082; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13148082 - 20 Jul 2021
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Abstract
Diet sustainability analyses are stronger when they incorporate multiple food systems domains, disciplines, scales, and time/space dimensions into a common modeling framework. Few analyses do this well: there are large gaps in food systems data in many regions, accessing private and some public [...] Read more.
Diet sustainability analyses are stronger when they incorporate multiple food systems domains, disciplines, scales, and time/space dimensions into a common modeling framework. Few analyses do this well: there are large gaps in food systems data in many regions, accessing private and some public data can be difficult, and there are analytical challenges, such as creating linkages across datasets and using complex analytical methods. This article summarizes key data sources across multiple domains of food system sustainability (nutrition, economic, environment) and describes methods and tools for integrating them into a common analytic framework. Our focus is the United States because of the large number of publicly available and highly disaggregated datasets. Thematically, we focus on linkages that exist between environmental and economic datasets to nutrition, which can be used to estimate the cost and agricultural resource use of food waste, interrelationships between healthy eating and climate impacts, diets optimized for cost, nutrition, and environmental impacts, and others. The limitations of these approaches and data sources are described next. By enhancing data integration across these fields, researchers can be better equipped to promote policy for sustainable diets. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health)
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Perspective
Affordable Nutrient Density: Toward Economic Indicators of Sustainable Healthy Diets
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9300; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169300 - 19 Aug 2021
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Abstract
Economics represents one of the four dimensions of sustainable nutrition. Affordable nutrient density is a key indicator of access to sustainable healthy diets. While the nutritional value of foods is assessed using nutrient density metrics, affordability metrics assess energy content and nutritional value [...] Read more.
Economics represents one of the four dimensions of sustainable nutrition. Affordable nutrient density is a key indicator of access to sustainable healthy diets. While the nutritional value of foods is assessed using nutrient density metrics, affordability metrics assess energy content and nutritional value of foods in relation to their cost. To be nutrition-relevant, such economic indicators are normally expressed in terms of monetary cost per calorie or per nutrient, as opposed to food weight. Affordability of healthy foods can also be related to the relative cost of staple grains and linked to local wages, incomes, and community purchasing power. The same concepts can be extended to the carbon cost of food production. In parallel with the affordability metrics, greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental costs ought to be calculated per 1000 kcal or per nutrient rather than per kilogram of food. Foods and food patterns need to be nutrient-rich, affordable, culturally appropriate, and appealing, and with low impact on natural resources. In this perspective article, we critically reflect on the linkages between the economic and health dimensions of sustainable nutrition and discuss some of the inherent tensions and synergies among them. Finally, we propose an approach to better integrate economic and sustainability considerations in the nutrition policy. Policy goals should prioritize balancing the nutritional value of food against its monetary or environmental cost. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health)
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Perspective
Toward Sociocultural Indicators of Sustainable Healthy Diets
Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7226; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137226 - 28 Jun 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 905
Abstract
Balancing the social, economic and environmental priorities for public health is at the core of the United Nations (UN) approaches to sustainable development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The four dimensions of sustainable diets are often presented as health, society, economics, and [...] Read more.
Balancing the social, economic and environmental priorities for public health is at the core of the United Nations (UN) approaches to sustainable development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The four dimensions of sustainable diets are often presented as health, society, economics, and the environment. Although sustainable diet research has focused on health and the environment, the social and economic dimensions of sustainable diets and food systems should not be forgotten. Some research priorities and sociocultural indicators for sustainable healthy diets and food systems are outlined in this report. The present goal is to improve integration of the social dimension into research on food and nutrition security. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health)
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