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Aquatic foods at the nutrition–environment nexus

A recent analysis of the environmental footprint of the world’s food systems1 found that aquatic foods, which include all fish, shellfish and seaweeds that are farmed or harvested in marine or freshwater environments, supply only 1% of food produced globally but are responsible for 10% of cumulative environmental impacts of food production. This statistic obscures two vital facts about the role of aquatic foods in food systems: first, that while aquatic foods account for a small proportion of total food production, they are an important source of vital nutrients; and second, that while some aquatic foods place substantial pressure on environmental systems, there are hundreds of aquatic foods that offer highly sustainable options.

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Fig. 1: Pressure per tonne related to calorie content and nutrient richness for each food group.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. S. Halpern for providing responses to our inquiries and for looking at an earlier draft of the manuscript. Funding for J.Z.K. is from the MAVA Foundation. Funding for J.P.L. is from The Builders Initiative. Funding for E.H.A. is from donors to the OneCGIAR trust fund, through the Resilient Aquatic Food Systems Initiative.

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  1. Center for Ocean Solutions, Woods Institute for the Environment, Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    J. Zachary Koehn & James P. Leape

  2. WorldFish, Bayan Lepas, Malaysia

    Edward H. Allison

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  1. J. Zachary Koehn
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J. Zachary Koehn.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Michalis Hadjikakou for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Methodology, Supplementary Figures 1-3, Supplementary Table 1

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Koehn, J.Z., Leape, J.P. & Allison, E.H. Aquatic foods at the nutrition–environment nexus.
Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01229-y

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  • Published: 19 October 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01229-y

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