Various models and datasets related to aflatoxins in the maize and dairy production chain have been developed and used but they have not yet been linked with each other. This study aimed to investigate the impacts of climate change on aflatoxin B₁ production in maize and its consequences on aflatoxin M₁ contamination in dairy cow’s milk, using a full chain modelling approach. To this end, available models and input data were chained together in a modelling framework. As a case study, we focused on maize grown in Eastern Europe and imported to the Netherlands to be fed–as part of dairy cows’ compound feed–to dairy cows in the Netherlands. Three different climate models, one aflatoxin B₁ prediction model and five different carryover models were used. For this particular case study of East European maize, most of the calculations suggest an increase (up to 50%) of maximum mean aflatoxin M₁ in milk by 2030, except for one climate (DMI) model suggesting a decrease. Results from all combinations of carryover and climate models suggest a similar or slight increase (up to 0.6%) of the chance of finding aflatoxin M₁ in milk above the EC limit of 0.05 μg/kg by 2030. Results varied mainly with the climate model data and carryover model considered. The model framework infrastructure is flexible so that forecasting models for other mycotoxins or other food safety hazards as well as other production chains, together with necessary input databases, can easily be included as well. This modelling framework for the first time links datasets and models related to aflatoxin B₁ in maize and related aflatoxin M₁ the dairy production chain to obtain a unique predictive methodology based on Monte Carlo simulation. Such an integrated approach with scenario analysis provides possibilities for policy makers and risk managers to study the effects of changes in the beginning of the chain on the end product.

Effective management of obesity and type 2 diabetes is a major global public health challenge that requires evidence-based, scalable personalized nutrition solutions. Here, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) driven dietary recommendation system that generates personalized smoothie recipes while prioritizing health outcomes and environmental sustainability. A key feature of the system is the “virtual nutritionist”, an iterative validation framework that dynamically refines recipes to meet predefined nutritional and sustainability criteria. The system integrates dietary guidelines from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), EUFIC, USDA FoodData Central, and the American Diabetes Association with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to deliver evidence-based recommendations. By aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the system promotes plant-based, seasonal, and locally sourced ingredients to reduce environmental impact. We leverage explainable AI (XAI) to enhance user engagement through clear explanations of ingredient benefits and interactive features, improving comprehension across varying health literacy levels. Using zero-shot and few-shot learning techniques, the system adapts to user inputs while maintaining privacy through local deployment of the LLaMA3 model. In evaluating 1,000 recipes, the system achieved 80.1% adherence to health guidelines meeting targets for calories, fiber, and fats and 92% compliance with sustainability criteria, emphasizing seasonal and locally sourced ingredients. A prototype web application enables real-time, personalized recommendations, bridging the gap between AI-driven insights and clinical dietary management. This research underscores the potential of AI-driven precision nutrition to revolutionize chronic disease management by improving dietary adherence, enhancing health literacy, and offering a scalable, adaptable solution for clinical workflows, telehealth platforms, and public health initiatives, with the potential to significantly alleviate the global healthcare burden.

Systematic reviews are used to collect relevant literature to answer a research question in a way that is clear, thorough, unbiased and reproducible. They are implemented as a standard method in the domain of food safety to obtain a literature overview on the state-of-the-art research related to food safety topics of interest. A disadvantage to systematic reviews, however, is that this process is time-consuming and requires expert domain knowledge. The work reported here aims to reduce the time needed by an expert to screen all possible relevant articles by applying machine learning techniques to classify the articles automatically as either relevant or not relevant. Eight different machine learning algorithms and ensembles of all combinations of these algorithms were tested on two different systematic reviews on food safety (i.e. chemical hazards in cereals and leafy greens). The results showed that the best performance was obtained by an ensemble of naive Bayes and a support vector machine, resulting in an average decrease of 32.8% in the amount of articles the expert has to read and an average decrease in irrelevant articles of 57.8% while keeping 95% of the relevant articles. It was concluded that automatic classification of the literature in a systematic literature review can support experts in their task and save valuable time without compromising the quality of the review.