Exploring the benefits of wild plants in dietary nutrition: investigating perspectives, choices, health impacts and sustainable practices
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Anwar T
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10865668 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundDietary patterns and their possible effects on health and the environment are becoming increasingly important. It is thought that nutritionally balanced diets can also be compatible with environmental targets and, therefore, the Mediterranean diet (MD), which is regarded as a sustainable diet model, comes to the fore. This study was carried out to evaluate adherence to the MD with sustainable nutrition knowledge and environmentally responsible food choices and to determine the factors affecting adherence.MethodsA questionnaire prepared by the researchers was sent to individuals online and 1732 adults living in Turkey participated in this cross-sectional study. Adherence to the MD was evaluated with the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS). In addition, questions were asked about nutritional knowledge and environmentally responsible food choices to evaluate the sustainable nutritional behaviors of individuals.ResultsHalf of the participants (51.1% of men / 53% of women) adhere to the MD at a moderate level. Even the individuals with the highest adherence to the MD had low compliance with the recommendations for fruit (43.4%) and fish (37.3%) consumption. A one-unit increase in age, sustainable nutrition knowledge score, and environmentally responsible food choices score increases the MD adherence score by 0.08, 0.125, and 0.148 points, respectively (p < 0.005). Individuals with high adherence to the MD avoid consuming genetically modified organism food more (p < 0.001), prefer to consume environmentally labeled foods (p < 0.001), and buy food more from local businesses (p < 0.001), while they prefer to buy imported food less (p = 0.034).ConclusionThe results of this study showed that some strategies should be developed to increase the adaptation of individuals to the MD and sustainable nutritional behaviors. Nutritionally adequate, sustainable, and eco-friendly nutritional behaviors should be encouraged to increase the possible health benefits of nutrition and minimize environmental effects. To promote sustainable nutrition, firstly it is important to determine the knowledge level of individuals concerning sustainable nutrition and, for this purpose, it is thought that an international valid sustainable nutrition knowledge assessment tool is needed.
| S-EPMC10130392 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundMany patients are admitted to hospital and are already malnourished. Gaps in practice have identified that care processes for these patients can be improved. Hospital staff, including management, needs to work towards optimizing nutrition care in hospitals to improve the prevention, detection and treatment of malnutrition. The objective of this study was to understand how staff members perceived and described the necessary ingredients to support change efforts required to improve nutrition care in their hospital.MethodsA qualitative study was conducted using purposive sampling techniques to recruit participants for focus groups (FG) (n = 11) and key informant interviews (n = 40) with a variety of hospital staff and management. Discussions based on a semi-structured schedule were conducted at five diverse hospitals from four provinces in Canada as part of the More-2-Eat implementation project. One researcher conducted 2-day site visits over a two-month period to complete all interviews and FGs. Interviews were transcribed verbatim while key points and quotes were taken from FGs. Transcripts were coded line-by-line with initial thematic analysis completed by the primary author. Other authors (n = 3) confirmed the themes by reviewing a subset of transcripts and the draft themes. Themes were then refined and further detailed. Member checking of site summaries was completed with site champions.ResultsParticipants (n = 133) included nurses, physicians, food service workers, dietitians, and hospital management, among others. Discussion regarding ways to improve nutrition care in each specific site facilitated the thought process during FG and interviews. Five main themes were identified: building a reason to change; involving relevant people in the change process; embedding change into current practice; accounting for climate; and building strong relationships within the hospital team.ConclusionsHospital staff need a reason to change their nutrition care practices and a significant change driver is perceived and experienced benefit to the patient. Participants described key ingredients to support successful change and specifically engaging the interdisciplinary team to effect sustainable improvements in nutrition care.Trial registrationRetrospectively registered ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02800304 , June 7, 2016.
| S-EPMC5518103 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Overlooked in national reports and in conservation programs, wild food plants (WFPs) have been a vital component of food and nutrition security for centuries. Recently, several countries have reported on the widespread and regular consumption of WFPs, particularly by rural and indigenous communities but also in urban contexts. They are reported as critical for livelihood resilience and for providing essential micronutrients to people enduring food shortages or other emergency situations. However, threats derived from changes in land use and climate, overexploitation and urbanization are reducing the availability of these biological resources in the wild and contributing to the loss of traditional knowledge associated with their use. Meanwhile, few policy measures are in place explicitly targeting their conservation and sustainable use. This can be partially attributed to a lack of scientific evidence and awareness among policymakers and relevant stakeholders of the untapped potential of WFPs, accompanied by market and non-market barriers limiting their use. This paper reviews recent efforts being undertaken in several countries to build evidence of the importance of WFPs, while providing examples of cross-sectoral cooperation and multi-stakeholder approaches that are contributing to advance their conservation and sustainable use. An integrated conservation approach is proposed contributing to secure their availability for future generations.
| S-EPMC7601573 | biostudies-literature
Project description:People's daily travels are structured and can be expressed as networks. Few studies explore how people organize their daily travels and which behavioral principles result in the choices of specific network types. In this study, we first reconstruct location networks and activity networks for numerous individuals from high-resolution mobile phone positioning data and define frequent networks as motifs. The results suggest that 99.9% of people's travels can be characterized by a limited set of location-based motifs and activity-based motifs. The results further reveal that the least effort principle governs the preferred motif choices through quantifying the rank-frequency properties. The scaling properties of distance characteristically impact motifs, and their scaling differences by node numbers and motif types coincide with the popularities of motifs, verifying the self-adaptions in motif choices; that is, although individuals travel with unique propensities, they always tend to choose the motif with the lowest consumption that satisfies their demand.
| S-EPMC6467417 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Our current rapidly growing food systems are imposing a heavy burden on both environmental sustainability and human health. Sustainable and healthy diets aim to promote optimal health and have a minimal environmental impact. This study aimed to critically review and synthesise the evidence on the effectiveness of web-based nutrition education interventions aiming to promote sustainable and healthy diets among young adults. A systematic search of four databases (Medline, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Embase) was conducted in March 2021. Studies were included if they used an online platform to deliver the intervention to young adults and measured at least one aspect of sustainable and healthy diets, such as plant-based food intake, food waste, and local and seasonal produce. Of the 2991 studies, a total of 221 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility of which 22 were included in the final review. A majority of the studies (82%) targeted fruit and vegetable consumption, and close to a quarter of studies (23%) targeted other aspects of a sustainable and healthy diet, such as red meat intake. Only one study included multiple aspects of a sustainable and healthy diet. Program delivery outcomes reported overall positive feedback and engagement. This review suggests that web-based interventions may be effective in promoting some sustainable diet-related outcomes in young adults. However, there is a need for developing and evaluating future programs to promote sustainable diets more comprehensively in order to help young adults make healthy and sustainable food choices.
| S-EPMC8835600 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Greenhouse gas emissions from the food system constitute about one-third of the global total, hence mitigation in this sphere of human activity is a vital goal for research and policy. This study empirically tests the effectiveness of different interventions to reduce the carbon footprint of food choices made on food-delivery apps, using an incentive-compatible online randomized controlled trial with 4,008 participants. The experiment utilized an interactive web platform that mimics popular online food-delivery platforms (such as Just Eat) and included three treatment conditions: a sign-posted meat tax, a carbon-footprint label, and a choice-architecture intervention that changed the order of the menu so that the lowest carbon-impact restaurants and dishes were presented first. Results show that only the choice-architecture nudge significantly reduced the average meal carbon footprint-by 0.3 kg/CO2e per order (12%), driven by a 5.6 percentage point (13%) reduction in high-carbon meal choices. Moreover, we find evidence of significant health and well-being co-benefits. Menu repositioning resulted in the average meal order having greater nutritional value and fewer calories, whilst significantly increasing self-reported satisfaction with the meal choice. Simple back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that menu repositioning would be a highly cost-effective policy instrument if implemented at scale, with the return on investment expected to be in the range of £1.28 to £3.85 per metric ton of avoided CO2 emissions, depending on implementation costs.
| S-EPMC11450623 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Precise crop fertilization requires an in-depth understanding of plant uptake and utilisation to optimise sustainable production. This study investigated the influence of nitrogen (N) nutrition and pruning on the cannabinoid concentrations and biomass of a commercial cannabis cultivar; the rationale for this study is how N supply and pruning affect cannabinoid yields and concentration in a commercial setting. Clones of a Cannabis sativa L. (CBD-type) were grown in a controlled-environment glasshouse in pots with coarse sand. After five weeks of vegetative growth under 210 mg/L N and an 18 h light regime, rates of 30, 60, 210, and 500 mg/L N were applied to plants for twelve weeks and a light regime set at 12 h. Double stem pruning was applied as an additional treatment to investigate efficacy on biomass increase. Biomass, N concentrations, and cannabinoid concentrations were measured after the final harvest. Pruning treatment did not increase cannabinoid concentrations or affect biomass. It was coincidentally found that plants on the glasshouse edge with higher exposure to sunlight developed more biomass and higher cannabinoid concentrations. Only biomass in leaves was increased significantly via higher nitrogen nutrition. Cannabinoid concentration, as well as cannabinoid yield per plant were decreased with the increase in N supply. High rates of fertilizer are not recommended because of reduced cannabinoid concentration and biomass yield: the ideal N supply is likely to be between 60 and 210 mg/L. This research will benefit growers and advisors in understanding the complexity of effects of nitrogen fertiliser and pruning practices on plant biomass and secondary metabolite production in medicinal cannabis.
| S-EPMC10636206 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHealthy eating patterns from sustainable food systems are crucial for population and planetary health. Primary schools are opportune settings for teaching children about food, nutrition and sustainability (FNS) though little is known about the delivery of FNS education in this sector. This study aimed to analyse current approaches to FNS education in Australian primary schools.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey with closed- and open-ended questions collected data about (i) teacher perceptions and attributes regarding FNS education; (ii) FNS teaching practices; and (iii) factors influencing FNS education. Statistical analyses were conducted using STATA including descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses to test for associations between categorical variables. Qualitative content and thematic analyses of open-ended questions were conducted using NVivo 14.ResultsParticipants were 413 Australian primary school teachers. Teachers considered FNS education as equally important to most curriculum subjects, though frequency of FNS education was low. Less than a third of teachers were trained in FNS education, had access to funding for FNS-related activities or were from schools with policies about including FNS education in the curriculum. There was a significant association between frequency of FNS education and teacher training, access to funding and presence of FNS curriculum policies (all p < 0.001). Teachers who were trained to teach nutrition, food skills or food sustainability (all p < 0.05) were more likely to teach this as both stand-alone and cross-curricular subjects. Teachers described personal factors (workload, stress, scope of practice) that influenced their FNS teaching practices, as well as factors related to students' families (family responsibility for FNS education, family food practices, family engagement in FNS activities), the curriculum (overcrowding, prioritisation, access to resources) and the broader school environment (time, facilities, funding, training).ConclusionsStrengthening the position of FNS education in the primary school sector is an important next step for public health research, policy and practice. Researchers and policy makers should explore future opportunities for training, funding and policy approaches that prioritise FNS within the primary school curriculum and in everyday teaching practice.
| S-EPMC11583557 | biostudies-literature
Project description:N6-methyladenosine is the most prominent RNA modification in mammals. Here, we study mouse skin embryogenesis to tackle m6A's functions and physiological importance. We first landscape the m6A modifications on skin epithelial progenitor mRNAs. Contrasting with in vivo ribosomal profiling, we unearth a correlation between m6A modification in coding sequences and enhanced translation, particularly of key morphogenetic signaling pathways. Tapping physiological relevance, we show that m6A loss profoundly alters these cues and perturbs cellular fate choices and tissue architecture in all skin lineages. By single-cell transcriptomics and bioinformatics, both signaling and canonical translation pathways show significant downregulation after m6A loss. Interestingly, however, many highly m6A-modified mRNAs are markedly upregulated upon m6A loss, and they encode RNA-methylation, RNA-processing and RNA-metabolism factors. Together, our findings suggest that m6A functions to enhance translation of key morphogenetic regulators, while also destabilizing sentinel mRNAs that are primed to activate rescue pathways when m6A levels drop.
| S-EPMC7535931 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Managing agricultural watersheds in an environmentally friendly manner necessitate the strategic implementation of well-targeted sustainable land management (SLM) practices that limit soil and nonpoint source pollution losses and translocation. Watershed-scale SLM-scenario modeling has the potential to identify efficient and effective management strategies from the field to the integrated landscape level. In a case study targeting a 66-hectare watershed in Petzenkirchen, Lower Austria, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was utilized to evaluate a variety of locally adoptable SLM practices. SWAT was calibrated and validated (monthly) at the catchment outlet for flow, sediment, nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N), ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N), and mineralized phosphorus (PO4-P) using SWATplusR. Considering the locally existing agricultural practices and socioeconomic and environmental factors of the research area, four conservation practices were evaluated: baseline scenario, contour farming (CF), winter cover crops (CC), and a combination of no-till and cover crops (NT + CC). The NT + CC SLM practice was found to be the most effective soil conservation practice in reducing soil loss by around 80%, whereas CF obtained the best results for decreasing the nutrient loads of NO3-N and PO4-P by 11% and 35%, respectively. The findings of this study imply that the setup SWAT model can serve the context-specific performance assessment and eventual promotion of SLM interventions that mitigate on-site land degradation and the consequential off-site environmental pollution resulting from agricultural nonpoint sources.
| S-EPMC10039844 | biostudies-literature