Food biodiversity is essential for improving nutrition and reducing hunger in populations worldwide. However, in middle and low-income countries, the biodiversity of food production does not necessarily represent food consumption patterns by population. We used Brazil, one of the world's megabiodiverse countries, as a case study to investigate the following questions: what is the prevalence of consumption of biodiverse foods in Brazil, and what are the socioeconomic factors that influence their consumption throughout the country? We used data from a Brazilian representative national dietary survey to estimate the frequency of food consumption of unconventional food plants, edible mushrooms, and wild meat, in according to socioeconomic variables. Thus, we investigated the socioeconomic predictors of Unconventional Food Plants consumption using methods of Machine Learning (ML) and multiple zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression. We showed that biodiverse food consumption in Brazil is low, just related by 1.3% of the population, varying in according to area, ethnicity, age, food insecurity, sex, and educational level. Our findings of low utilization of biodiversity suggest an important mismatch between the rich biodiversity of the country and its representation in the human diet.

Family farming is strengthening its strategic role in school nutrition, but coordinating between school feeding programs and the agricultural sector has proven to be challenging. The goal of this review was to identify the problems that school feeding programs face in acquiring food from family farms. We selected studies from Web of Science, Medline/PubMed, and Scopus and evaluated their methodological quality. Out of 338 studies identified, 37 were considered relevant. We used PRISMA to guide the review process, and we chose not to limit the year or design of the study because it was important to include the largest amount of existing evidence on the topic. We summarized the main conclusions in six categories: local food production, marketing, and logistics channels, legislation, financial costs, communication and coordination, and quality of school menus. In general, the most critical problems emerge from the most fragile point, which is family farming, particularly in the production and support of food, and are influenced by the network of actors, markets, and governments involved. The main problems stem from the lack of investment in family farming and inefficient logistics, which can negatively impact the quality of school meals. Viable solutions include strategies that promote investment in agricultural policies and the organization of family farmers.

This study intended to address the challenges faced by the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) to implement public purchases from family farming, as they understand their role in the transformation of local food systems. For this, we developed a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, located in the northeastern semiarid region, during the regional assessments done by the Collaborating Center for the School Feeding Program in 2018 and 2019. We analyzed the policy from the perspective of the social actors inserted at the ends of the supply and demand chain through the application of questionnaires and focus groups. There were 188 social actors from 45 municipalities taking part in our data gathering. We examined the meeting of supply and demand based on the performance of the policy in the state, and identified that: i) the percentage of purchases between 2011 and 2017 was, on average, 19.1%, demonstrating that, despite not meeting the recommended rate, the state has progressed its investments in this segment; ii) some limitations characterized the limited effectiveness of public purchases of family farming for schools: lack of federal actions to enhance the value of family farming, unfavorable conditions for local agricultural production, low performance of technical rural assistance, menus do not reflect the offer of family farming, difficulties in preparing and executing the public call and insufficient communication between social actors; iii) Action and decision-making, through street-level bureaucracy, depends on the discretion of the social actors. We believe that this study can collaborate in the understanding of structural problems that affect the implementation of the program and assist in the search for alternatives that are consistent with the current needs, aiming at the construction of sustainable food systems.

A necessidade de reformular sistemas alimentares é uma constante nos debates das Políticas de Alimentação e Nutrição em todo o mundo. A ciência da Nutrição, nesse cenário, tem a oportunidade de avaliar sua abordagem hegemônica, ligada ao paradigma biológico, visando a um maior engajamento político nas questões que fragilizam seu sistema alimentar. Buscou-se, com este trabalho, demonstrar como o processo histórico e social de construção do sistema alimentar brasileiro relaciona-se com falhas de segurança alimentar e nutricional atuais. Trata-se de pesquisa qualitativa, que tomou como perspectiva de método a geografia literária. O território brasileiro foi dividido em sete manchas culinárias, porções do território que constituem regiões para o estudo social da alimentação. Compuseram seu corpus 27 trabalhos literários, de 20 escritores brasileiros, coletados e analisados com o apoio das dimensões conceituais definidas no estudo: espaços narrativos e objetos culinários. O mau uso da terra, a comoditização da comida e a oferta indiscriminada de alimentos industrializados foram listadas como as principais falhas no sistema alimentar analisado. A abordagem das Ciências Humanas e Sociais pode oferecer importante contribuição à Nutrição para maior protagonismo em problemas do sistema alimentar relacionados com aspectos socioculturais.