Smart Food for Healthy, Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems

Download or read book Smart Food for Healthy, Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems written by and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are no longer able to provide the world population with a healthy diet and, at the same time, sustainably balance our planetary resources to ensure resilient and viable livelihoods for smallholder farmers. For the past fifty years, diets have become less nutritionally balanced, contribute significantly to climate change, and have accelerated the process of biodiversity erosion. We have reduced the number of species that are cultivated for food, and for each species, we are growing fewer varieties. While agriculture has moved towards uniformity, biodiversity is the basis of healthy and nutritious diets, and biodiversity is paramount for adapting crops to climate change. Hence, it is important to build resilient and sustainable food systems by re-introducing diversity into our agricultural systems and introducing “Smart Food” from smart crops into our diets. Smart Food is food that fulfills the criteria for being good for you (nutritious and healthy), good for the planet (environmentally sustainable); and beneficial to the farmers who grow these crops (resilient and viable). The aim of this Research Topic is to provide researchers, research managers, funding agencies, and government agencies with scientifically backed information to foster awareness, increased use, and support for research into Smart Food.