World Environment Day blues

This year’s theme of ‘Air Pollution’ for World Environment Day 2019 has been articulated to position, stimulate and advance discussions around this huge man-made crisis. 

While people at large, including scientists and academia, perceive the term ‘environment’ as mostly to do with the air around us, several types of pollution, ecological break down, climate change and global warming, or public nutrition often doesn’t accompany the discourse on improving our environment. 

It is worth arguing that for a holistic achievement of sustainable development goals, improvement in public health nutrition must be brought centre stage. While seven million people worldwide died prematurely from air pollution last year, 11 million lives were lost due to poor diets alone. 

Several high quality papers and studies have detailed the adverse health impact of ultra-processed foods. These foods, high in fat, sugar and salt, have been shown to result in 62 per cent higher all-cause mortality rate among frequent consumers (four servings a day). 

Some reports have also demonstrated that people consuming junk food eat more and end up getting obese faster than those consuming minimally processed fresh whole foods. 

It should thus be of minimal surprise but highest concern that our planet is inhabited by 2 billion overweight-obese people, while about 821 million are undernourished. 

Millions suffer from multiple micronutrient deficiencies too. All these collectively constitute a massive public health and nutrition emergency caused by poor diets emanating from compromised food environments. 

Another related aspect of unhealthy eating habits is the huge amount of food waste. Since food waste is largely perceived to be linked with individual eating habits, it is not yet seen as a major issue. That is why the global response to food waste is fragmented and inadequate. 

We want to advocate that food wastage deteriorates our food environment. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 30 per cent of food is wasted globally across the supply chain, contributing 8 per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. 

Wasted food produces gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases at each stage starting from food production to storage (using refrigeration). 

Studies project that going by current trends, the amount of food waste will rise to about 2.1 billion tonnes per year by 2030, which translates to 66 tonnes of food wasted per second, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.

This wasted food will yield about 70 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

Our purpose is to lobby for a comprehensive and inclusive policy discussion around building a cohesive, coherent and robust environment and public health policy. 

While we propose strategies to conserve food wastage below, we propagate for bolder and bigger action to conserve Mother Nature by bringing together several overlapping sectors/components to discuss and deliver collaboratively. 

All of us as individuals, families and as societies, have a role to play in reducing food wastage. We should all be responsible consumers and sellers. Small portions, especially of perishable items, should be bought. Embrace ‘ugly food’ — fruits and vegetables that are blemished and not perfectly shaped, but are delicious and nutritious. Store properly, use and share leftovers. 

These small steps drive demand and supply in the markets, which can help to keep stocks accordingly. This will also aid in reducing emissions from storage, transportation, packaging, processing and production. 

Food-selling places can offer flexible portion sizes and encourage leftovers to be taken home. Investing in mass awareness and education, providing affordable efficient technology to save and share food can help tackle food wastage. 

Other solutions like kitchen gardening, composting (improve soil health and productivity) and using anaerobic digesters (help methane convert to electricity) may also be beneficial last resorts for food that cannot be eaten or redistributed. 

Another area where environment is seen to interact and impact public nutrition is via ozone pollution, which is expected to reduce staple crop yields by 26 per cent by 2030. 

Studies systematically investigating the impact of air pollution and climate change on crops in India, have showed that wheat yields reduced by one third while rice yields decreased by one fifth in India in 2010 (baseline: yield in 1980). Pollution from soot and ozone has reduced crop yields to as high as 50 per cent in some parts of India. To ensure that the world will have enough food in the near future, we urgently need to address air pollution. 

Ozone and soot when absorbed by plants, form ‘reactive oxygen species’ that can lead to cell death and impede growth. Agriculture and nutrition scientists must develop indigenous ozone resistant and/or resilient varieties of crops with increased productivity. 

Capacity building workshops, enhanced advocacy, integrated policy dialogues and more academic-cum-research initiatives should be developed and nurtured to advance knowledge and action in this space. 

In summary, the celebration of this World Environment Day provides us with an opportunity to broaden the basis for an enlightened opinion and responsible conduct by individuals, societies and organisations in preserving and enhancing the environment by using complementary strategies from multiple disciplines, including (but not limited to) nutrition. 

As public health and nutrition professionals, we would like to add our strongest recommendation to include action to improve nutrition as one of the priority areas to accelerate action to alleviate environmental degradation. 

Author is head, Nutrition Research and Additional Professor, PHFI. Views are personal