Assessing seafood nutritional diversity together with climate impacts informs more comprehensive dietary advice

Bianchi, Marta; Hallström, Elinor; Parker, Robert; Mifflin, Kathleen; Tyedmers, Peter; Ziegler, Friederike

doi:10.1038/s43247-022-00516-4

Cited by 55 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Collectively our findings suggest wild caught pelagic fishes and farmed bivalves have the greatest potential to be sustainable, nutritious, and low-emissions animal source foods, corroborating previous research (Hallström et al 2019, Bianchi et al 2022, Koehn et al 2022. By placing nutrient and carbon footprints in the context of seafood production volumes, we also reveal opportunities for transitioning seafood systems towards low-emissions, healthy foods.…”

Section: Sustainability and Affordability Of Low-emissions Nutritious...supporting

confidence: 91%

“…Placing these values in context of recommended sustainable diet guidelines (EAT-Lancet, Willett et al 2019), a 100 g seafood portion would account for between 5% (small pelagic fish) and 85% (crustacean) of the daily greenhouse gas emissions per person (Kovacs et al 2021). As noted by several recent global seafood analyses (Hallström et al 2019, Bianchi et al 2022, Koehn et al 2022, nutrient and CO 2eq estimates averaged across wild and aquaculture obscured differences among species and production methods, with particularly large variation in greenhouse gas emissions among wild invertebrate fisheries and farmed fishes (figures 1(B) and S1). Such variability can be used to identify performance gaps (Gephart et al 2021), and here suggests that shifting production towards species with lower carbon emissions, within each taxonomic group, could still promote supply of nutritious seafood.…”

Section: Carbon Footprint and Nutrient Densitymentioning

confidence: 89%

“…For example, capture fisheries for crustaceans can produce 40x more greenhouse gas emissions than those catching small pelagic finfish (Parker et al 2018), whereas seafood farmed using feeds and requiring land conversion, such as shrimp, tend to perform poorly compared to unfed products that have negligible production emissions (MacLeod et al 2020). Nutrient content of these products also vary among species (Hicks et al 2019, Bernhardt and O'Connor 2021), and comparative analyses have shown that small pelagic fishes are among the most nutritious and lowest emissions seafood globally (Hallström et al 2019, Bianchi et al 2022, Koehn et al 2022. However, the potential for lowemissions seafood products to contribute to nutritious and climate-friendly diets will depend on their relative affordability (Headey and Alderman 2019) and availability to consumers (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Navigating sustainability and health trade-offs in global seafood systems

Robinson

Garrett

Esclapez

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Seafood is expected to play a key role in improving access to healthy diets while providing food products with relatively low rates of greenhouse gas emissions. However, both nutrients and carbon footprints vary among species and production methods, and seafood consumption is further influenced by price and consumer preference, such that it is unclear which species are best placed to provide low-carbon nutritious seafood. Here, we compare the nutrient content and ‘farm-gate’ greenhouse gas emissions of 106 fished and farmed seafood products globally and, using seafood production data, assess the nutritional value, carbon emissions, sustainability, affordability, and availability of seafood available to UK consumers. Most seafood products are more nutritious and emit lower greenhouse gases than terrestrial animal-source foods. Among seafoods, small pelagic fishes and bivalves met recommended intakes for 3-4 essential dietary nutrients at the lowest emissions, whereas beef and lamb had the highest emissions per recommended nutrient target. For seafood products relevant to UK markets and consumers, Atlantic mackerel had the highest availability (landings) of all wild-caught UK seafood and lowest carbon footprint of all finfish, with one fillet portion exceeding recommended intakes of five nutrients (iodine, selenium, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins B12 and D). We found that price and sustainability of UK seafood, both factors in consumer demand, had considerable trade-offs with nutrients, carbon footprint, and availability. Farmed salmon, for example, were produced in large volumes but were relatively more expensive and less nutritious than other seafood, whereas highly nutritious, low-carbon farmed mussels had limited production volumes. The UK's seafood system is therefore not currently optimised to produce nutritious, low-carbon seafood in large amounts. Policies that promote local consumption of affordable species already produced in high volumes, such as mackerel, could improve intakes of nutrients that are deficient in the UK population, at relatively low environmental cost.

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Section: Sustainability and Affordability Of Low-emissions Nutritious...supporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Carbon Footprint and Nutrient Densitymentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Navigating sustainability and health trade-offs in global seafood systems

Robinson

Garrett

Esclapez

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…The consumption of all these low trophic-level species has declined over the years. These species not only represent examples of mostly sustainable fisheries associated with low stressor emissions (Gephart et al, 2021) but also provide the greatest nutritional quality across all forms of aquatic foods (Bianchi et al, 2022;Koehn et al, 2022). Therefore, this shift in consumption trends of wild fish species should significantly affect their ecological footprint and fisheries sustainability.…”

Section: Trends In Blue Food Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the wrong track: Sustainable and low-emission blue food diets to mitigate climate change

Atalah

Sánchez-Jérez²

2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Seafood and other aquatic food (blue food) are often advocated as sustainable protein sources crucial to meeting global food demand. Consumption choices allow citizens to take actions that reduce the environmental burden of food production and tackle the climate crisis. Here we used a high-resolution Spanish national-level dataset collected from 12,500 households between 1999 and 2021 as a study case to assess trends in blue food consumption concerning sources, types and stressors resulting from their production. By aggregating species groups according to source, we found an overall reduction in the consumption of most wild species. For farmed species, we found a pronounced increase in the consumption of carnivorous fish and an overall decrease in low trophic-level species consumption, such as bivalves. Using published studies, we estimated greenhouse gases, nitrogen, and phosphorus emissions to assess trends in environmental footprint. Low performance was associated with the consumption of high trophic-level species intensively farmed in distant regions, such as carnivorous fish, due to high stressor emissions related to their production and transport. Across all groups, consumption of locally farmed bivalves conduced to the lowest stressor emissions, providing an example of ‘net-zero' blue food. Our analysis identified historical trends in the environmental footprint of blue food consumption and consumers' choices that promote environmentally sustainable diets. It also highlights vast differences in the ecological footprint associated with the consumption of aquaculture-sourced protein. Based on our assessment, we recommend refocusing consumption patterns toward farmed species with small environmental footprints, such as locally produced low trophic-level species, and implementing policies that increase consumers' environmental awareness and minimize food production systems' footprints. Considering global blue food demand is predicted to nearly double by mid-century, consumers' choices can significantly impact sustainable production practices and mitigate climate change.

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“…Based on the FAO (2020) , herring is captured globally at an average of 2,162 thousand tonnes per year and is ranked the 4th most landed species between 1950 and 2017. It has been identified as one of the most climate-friendly fish species yielding only 0.7 kg of CO 2 equivalents per kilogram ( Bianchi et al, 2022 ). Furthermore, most stocks are still considered sustainable ( FAO, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%