Blue foods come from water, whether sea life or freshwater algae, and could offer more nutritional and sustainable benefits than land-based meats. To meet the global demand of the future, while billions face undernourishment, blue foods are showing promise for the future of sustainable food security. Schemes such as the Blue Food Assessment could help us harness the potential that blue foods have to offer, making a sustainable future of food one step closer to reality.
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Blue food derives from water, whether from the sea or freshwater sources on land. Usually, we just think of seafood or fish when we think of blue food, offering us protein and specific nutrients. However, blue foods are much more diverse than they first seem, offering a broad range of nutrients, even comprising algae- and land-based aquatic foods.
Aquatic food offers myriad minerals and vitamins for our growing global population. Blue foods tend to rank higher for their nutritional content compared to land-based meats, while also having a lower carbon footprint since fewer greenhouse gases are given off during their production. For example, the acquisition of sardines, anchovies, bivalves, and seaweeds comes with a lower environmental footprint than chicken. This means that blue food can supply nutritional benefits to human health but also come with less harmful environmental impacts than meat production on land.
Blue Food Boosts Human Health and Sustainability
As the global population grows and demands more food, the effects of climate change impose restrictions on agriculture, particularly through aridity, desertification, and drought.
Researchers warn that by the middle of the 21st century, the worldwide demand for food will double. Yet, all hope is not lost, they claim that emphasizing blue food production can provide nutrition for the masses in a sustainable way. They predicted that by increasing blue food supplies by 15.5 million tons, we could avoid nutrient deficiency for as many as 166 million more people, providing affordable food, which will be particularly beneficial to those of low-income populations.
The most comprehensive analysis of the nutritional benefits of blue food is detailed in a paper published in Nature by Golden et al that launched the Aquatic Food Composition Database (AFCD). This characterizes the amounts of hundreds of types of nutrients for over 3,750 aquatic species. This provides a way of visualizing the high extent to which blue foods have nutritional value.
Could Eating More Seafood Be Better For the Planet?
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Why is Blue Food Not More Widespread?
There are over 2,500 species of marine life such as fish and algae being cultivated for food and providing livelihoods for over 100 million people, yet not enough countries are diving into what blue food has to offer. Developing the blue food sector country-wide can reap economic, health and sustainable benefits in response to global challenges we face.
This is particularly important to do following the hit of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that in 2020, between 720 and 811 million people faced hunger.
Statistics remained virtually unchanged from 2014 to 2019 but the prevalence of undernourishment statistics rose to approximately 9.9 percent in 2020, up from 8.4 percent the year before.
This worrying rise of hunger is made worse by climate change-related hazards, as global warming builds up year by year.
“Without mitigation, climate hazards pose high risks to nutritional, social, economic and environmental outcomes worldwide — especially for wild-capture fisheries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Small Island Developing States,” scientists wrote in a study published in Nature.
The Blue Food Assessment
Blue food could help mitigate the problem of undernourishment worsened by the effects of climate change. Schemes and initiatives will see that the blue food sector grows in the coming years.
A particularly prominent scheme that will be making strides is the Blue Food Assessment (BFA), a joint initiative partnered by Stanford University and The Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.
The initiative unites over 100 scientists worldwide to support decision-makers to build healthy, sustainable food systems based on blue food.
Believing that blue food is key to sustainable development, the BFA’s key motivations are clear in their Report of the Blue Food Assessment, stating:
There is growing recognition that food systems must be transformed— that achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires shifting toward a system that is more diverse, resilient and just, as well as healthier.
The BFA says that blue foods have much to offer in this transformation.
Introducing more blue food systems worldwide can help us meet our global sustainable development goals and support human health and nutrition following the hits of hunger brought on for millions after the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we continue to pick up the pieces of the pandemic and recover as a society that looks to the future, there is no better time to invest and participate in the blue food sector.
References and Further Reading
Blue Food Assessment. What We Do [Online]. Available at: https://bluefood.earth/what-we-do/
Cross, Daniel, T. (2021) Sustainably produced blue food could feed billions of people. [Online]. Sustainability Times. Available at: https://www.sustainability-times.com/green-consumerism/sustainably-produced-blue-food-could-feed-billions-of-people/
Byrd, K. A., Thilsted, S. H. & Fiorella, K. J. (2021) Fish nutrient composition: a review of global data from poorly assessed inland and marine species. Public Health Nutr. 24, 476–486. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980020003857
Golden, C. D. et al. (2016) Nutrition: fall in fish catch threatens human health. Nature 534, 317–320. https://doi.org/10.1038/534317a
Golden, C.D., Koehn, J.Z., Shepon, A. et al. (2021) Aquatic foods to nourish nations. Nature 598, 315–320. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03917-1
Hicks, C. C. et al. (2019) Harnessing global fisheries to tackle micronutrient deficiencies. Nature 574, 95–98. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1592-6
Tigchelaar, M., Cheung, W.W.L., Mohammed, E.Y. et al. (2021) Compound climate risks threaten aquatic food system benefits. Nat Food 2, 673–682. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00368-9
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