Journal of Clinical Nutrition & Dietetics

Description

A sustainable food system is one that provides people with healthy food while also creating sustainable environmental, economic, and social systems around food. The sustainable food systems begin with more sustainable agricultural practices, and are followed by more sustainable food distribution systems, the development of sustainable diets, and the reduction of food waste throughout the system. The term food system refers to the interconnected systems and processes that have an impact on nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. Growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution, and disposal of food and food-related items are all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population. And the terms "sustainability" and "sustainable development" are becoming more popular in publications and on the internet, but the issues are complex. The environmental dimension of sustainability is frequently discussed in terms of current issues. Since the early 2000s, for example, the dominant issues have been climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemical fluxes, and pollution, particularly plastic pollution. Sustainable agriculture is farming in ways that meet society's current food and textile needs without jeopardizing current or future generations' ability to meet their own needs. It can be founded on knowledge of ecosystem services. There are numerous methods for increasing agricultural sustainability. It is critical to develop flexible business processes and farming practices when developing agriculture within sustainable food systems. Food distribution is the process of supplying food to a large population. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) considers food distribution to be a part of the food system.

Depending on where you are, the process and mechanism for distributing food differs. With records reaching back thousands of years, food distribution has been a characteristic element of human behaviour in all communities. Most governments and societies have had a substantial impact on the mechanisms established to enable food distribution. Sustainable diets frequently seek to reduce the environmental impact of the entire contributing food system. These efforts can address anything from production practices and distribution to other economic or system concerns (such as food waste). However, because of the widespread negative environmental impact of these industries, most sustainable diets include a reduction in meat, dairy, and egg consumption. Food that is not consumed is referred to as food loss or waste. Food waste or loss can occur at any point in the food system, including production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Approximately one-third of the world's food is thrown away. Furthermore, food waste that is not properly handled or reclaimed, such as through composting can have a wide range of negative environmental consequences. Landfill gas from anaerobic digestion of organic matter, for example, is a major source of the greenhouse gas methane, and unclaimed phosphorus in food waste leads to additional phosphate mining. Furthermore, reducing food waste throughout the food system is an important part of reducing agriculture's environmental impact by reducing the total amount of water, land, and other resources used. Many or all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals have been argued to be central to sustainable food systems. And transitioning to more sustainable food systems is a critical component of addressing climate change causes. Agriculture and global climate change are inextricably linked processes. Climate change has the potential to have an immediate and indirect impact on agriculture. Changes in average temperatures, rainfall, and climate extremes can all have negative consequences. Alterations in pests and diseases changes in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and ozone at ground level Changes in the nutritional quality of certain foods, as well as changes in sea level. The effort to scientifically determine the mechanisms responsible for recent global warming and related climate changes on Earth is known as attribution of recent climate change.