ON Foods - Research and innovation network on food and nutrition Sustainability, Safety and Security – Working ON Foods
ProjectThe concept of sustainability has only recently entered everyday use. Sustainability refers to patterns of production and consumption that respect natural resources and their usual rhythms, focusing on long-term resilience and avoiding depletion of resources and environmental degradation.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, describes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ranging from ending poverty to improving health and education, reducing inequality, spurring economic growth, tackling climate change, and working to preserve our oceans and forests. The number of SDGs potentially targeted in the framework of this call and through the action of this project and the selected consortium is considerably high, covering those aimed at ending poverty and hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition (SDGs 1 and 2), ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages also through education (SDGs 3 and 4), but also those reducing inequalities and promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth (SDGs 8 and 10) and, finally, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient also through the promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns and through the development of resilient infrastructure and inclusive and sustainable industrialization (SDGs 11 and 12).
Based on what stated by the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), the framework of food systems encompasses food production, food supply chains, food environments, dietary habits, and food choices made by consumers, also including the related nutritional, environmental, and socio-economic outcomes. Food supply chains, often called food production and distribution networks, are increasingly complex and include all the stages and actors playing a role from food production to processing, distribution, retail marketing, consumption, and waste disposal. If food and agriculture are responsible for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the share of GHG emitted by the global food system, that includes post-retail activities, such as consumer cooking and waste, is estimated to be even higher (34% of total GHGs).
Even if the primary production stage is clearly the main contributor, the subsequent activities along the supply chain account for 18% of the food related GHGs (processing, 4%; transport, 5%; packaging, 6%; and retail, 4%). Finally, food waste emissions are huge, with around one-quarter of emissions (3.3 billion tonnes of CO2eq) from food production which becomes wastage either from supply chain (15% of food related GHGs) or consumers losses.
Food is also linked to human health at many levels. Based on the latest WHO report, contaminated food causes 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420.000 deaths every year, with globally 33 million years of healthy lives lost from eating unsafe food within the same timeframe, and this number is possibly an underestimation. For this reason, food safety and food risk management represent extremely relevant tasks in the context of the food system revision and implementation. Moreover, it is a fact that noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 71%
of all deaths globally, and that an affordable healthy diet is of primary importance to reduce this burden and the consequent costs for the health system. More recently, then, the evidence that interindividual differences in the way humans respond to food intake are modulating the effects of food on human health is mounting. The growing understanding of what physiological aspects are better descriptors of these differences is unavoidably requiring a more personalised approach to human nutrition, where individuals, beside the general population, are taken into consideration. This knowledge can significantly impact not only on the definition of more effective intervention strategies, but also on the design of new and/or improved food products and diets, able to target individual nutritional needs affecting individual metabolic and physiological responses.
Moreover, the recent dramatic and unexpected events, Covid 19 pandemics and the Russia-Ukraine war, have highlighted the clear need for better research and innovation plans to promote resilience and sustainable productivity in the framework of the food system. This could be achieved through
a)implementing actions to reduce long-term vulnerabilities,
b) ensuring food security covering all population needs;
c) strengthening the resilience of food companies by implementing their flexibility and management capacity in terms of alternative strategies to maintain and/or increase quality and productivity.
This implies a virtuous approach that can rely on adequate contingency plans and count on interdisciplinary expertise and capacity to cope with and contrast future unexpected critical scenarios. This initiative embodies this vision and represents the holistic and multidisciplinary strategy to contribute to this much-needed increase in food system resilience.
Finally, when addressing the goal for an increased food and diet sustainability, able to positively impact on human and planetary health, it is paramount to take into consideration the recognized interconnection among human, animal health, and the environment, as much as the fundamental reciprocal contribution that most, if not all, of these factors might have on climate change, food safety, and food security.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, describes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ranging from ending poverty to improving health and education, reducing inequality, spurring economic growth, tackling climate change, and working to preserve our oceans and forests. The number of SDGs potentially targeted in the framework of this call and through the action of this project and the selected consortium is considerably high, covering those aimed at ending poverty and hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition (SDGs 1 and 2), ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages also through education (SDGs 3 and 4), but also those reducing inequalities and promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth (SDGs 8 and 10) and, finally, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient also through the promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns and through the development of resilient infrastructure and inclusive and sustainable industrialization (SDGs 11 and 12).
Based on what stated by the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), the framework of food systems encompasses food production, food supply chains, food environments, dietary habits, and food choices made by consumers, also including the related nutritional, environmental, and socio-economic outcomes. Food supply chains, often called food production and distribution networks, are increasingly complex and include all the stages and actors playing a role from food production to processing, distribution, retail marketing, consumption, and waste disposal. If food and agriculture are responsible for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the share of GHG emitted by the global food system, that includes post-retail activities, such as consumer cooking and waste, is estimated to be even higher (34% of total GHGs).
Even if the primary production stage is clearly the main contributor, the subsequent activities along the supply chain account for 18% of the food related GHGs (processing, 4%; transport, 5%; packaging, 6%; and retail, 4%). Finally, food waste emissions are huge, with around one-quarter of emissions (3.3 billion tonnes of CO2eq) from food production which becomes wastage either from supply chain (15% of food related GHGs) or consumers losses.
Food is also linked to human health at many levels. Based on the latest WHO report, contaminated food causes 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420.000 deaths every year, with globally 33 million years of healthy lives lost from eating unsafe food within the same timeframe, and this number is possibly an underestimation. For this reason, food safety and food risk management represent extremely relevant tasks in the context of the food system revision and implementation. Moreover, it is a fact that noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 71%
of all deaths globally, and that an affordable healthy diet is of primary importance to reduce this burden and the consequent costs for the health system. More recently, then, the evidence that interindividual differences in the way humans respond to food intake are modulating the effects of food on human health is mounting. The growing understanding of what physiological aspects are better descriptors of these differences is unavoidably requiring a more personalised approach to human nutrition, where individuals, beside the general population, are taken into consideration. This knowledge can significantly impact not only on the definition of more effective intervention strategies, but also on the design of new and/or improved food products and diets, able to target individual nutritional needs affecting individual metabolic and physiological responses.
Moreover, the recent dramatic and unexpected events, Covid 19 pandemics and the Russia-Ukraine war, have highlighted the clear need for better research and innovation plans to promote resilience and sustainable productivity in the framework of the food system. This could be achieved through
a)implementing actions to reduce long-term vulnerabilities,
b) ensuring food security covering all population needs;
c) strengthening the resilience of food companies by implementing their flexibility and management capacity in terms of alternative strategies to maintain and/or increase quality and productivity.
This implies a virtuous approach that can rely on adequate contingency plans and count on interdisciplinary expertise and capacity to cope with and contrast future unexpected critical scenarios. This initiative embodies this vision and represents the holistic and multidisciplinary strategy to contribute to this much-needed increase in food system resilience.
Finally, when addressing the goal for an increased food and diet sustainability, able to positively impact on human and planetary health, it is paramount to take into consideration the recognized interconnection among human, animal health, and the environment, as much as the fundamental reciprocal contribution that most, if not all, of these factors might have on climate change, food safety, and food security.
