This study suggests over 5 billion people don’t consume enough iodine, vitamin E and calcium, and over 4 billion don’t consume enough iron, riboflavin, folate and vitamin C. Researchers claim this analysis provides the first global estimates of inadequate micronutrient intakes using dietary intake data, highlighting highly prevalent gaps across nutrients and variability by sex. 

This paper quantifies the availability of two macronutrients and nine micronutrients for 156 countries in ‘available food’, which they define as the quantity of food produced that is potentially available for consumption after factoring in reductions arising from food loss and waste, and non-food use through the production chain. Nutrient availability is assessed against a range of dietary guidelines to determine the depth and breadth of nutrient deficiencies across regions and countries, and a series of intervention strategies are explored. 

The Future of Nutrition analyses the history of our relationship to food and explores how the contemporary reductionist paradigm of nutrition and health science is limiting our ability to respond to public health crises. Campbell offers an alternative model based on a holistic understanding of health and nutrition, that he argues can improve public nutrition literacy and treat personal illness more effectively and economically

This paper estimates that plant-based diets can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by improving blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and body weight in comparison to traditional meat-containing omnivorous diets. However, it is less clear whether these same benefits are consistent in diets containing processed meat alternatives.

This paper estimates that the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet, which is low in animal products, does not provide sufficient levels of vitamin B12, calcium, iron and zinc. The calculations assume no supplementation or fortification. The authors recommend modifying the EAT-Lancet diet by increasing the levels of animal sourced foods and reducing foods high in phytate.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) of food often uses mass of food as a functional unit, i.e. environmental impacts are reported per kg of food. Another common functional unit is weight of protein contained in the food, which is important for comparing different sources of protein, notably meat and its alternatives. This paper goes one step further and examines how protein quality, as opposed to protein quantity, can be accounted for in food LCAs, by using a scoring system to reflect the availability and digestibility of indispensable (i.e. essential) amino acids.

In this book, epidemiologist Tim Spector sets out his approach to nutrition. He describes the importance of the microbiome, explores which foods are really “healthy” and “unhealthy” and discusses the impacts of food consumption on the environment. The book also contains many short chapters dedicated to specific food types, including fruit, legumes, fungi, meat and fermented dairy.

This paper, based on Australian dietary survey data, provides support for the “protein leverage hypothesis” - the theory that people’s appetites regulate their protein intake to be within a narrow range, and hence that if protein makes up a lower proportion of the foods they eat, people will end up consuming more calories (in the form of fats and carbohydrates) as a side effect of their appetite for protein. Hence, it argues, protein is key to understanding the high prevalence of obesity. It identifies highly processed foods as one of the food categories that has the strongest “diluting” effect on dietary protein.

This book gives an overview of the state of knowledge on health and sustainable diets, making the case for a diet based on whole, unprocessed plant foods. It is aimed at health professionals.