Resumo O objetivo do estudo foi analisar a distribuição espaço-temporal da prevalência de IAN nas Unidades de Federação (UF) do Brasil e sua correlação com indicadores de vulnerabilidade. Estudo ecológico, com dados da Pesquisa Nacional Amostra de Domicílios (2004, 2009 e 2013) e do Altas Brasil (2010). Realizou-se análise temporal da distribuição espacial das prevalências de IAN. Na análise espacial bivariada foi utilizado o Índice de Moran. As prevalências de IAN diminuíram nos anos analisados e apresentaram correlação espacial negativa e moderada com o IDH; positiva e moderada com porcentagem de extremamente pobres, mortalidade infantil, índice de vulnerabilidade social, índice de vulnerabilidade social capital humano; positiva e forte com índice de vulnerabilidade social renda e trabalho. Conclui-se que houve diminuição da prevalência de IAN nos anos analisados e que o território brasileiro apresentou dois padrões distintos: territórios com maiores prevalências de IAN e piores condições de renda, trabalho e saúde infantil nas regiões Norte e Nordeste; e territórios com menores prevalências de IAN e menor vulnerabilidade nas regiões Centro-Oeste, Sudeste e Sul.

Food biodiversity presents one of the most significant opportunities to enhance food and nutrition security today. The lack of data on many plants, however, limits our understanding of their potential and the possibility of building a research agenda focused on them. Our objective with this systematic review was to identify biodiverse food plants occurring in the Caatinga biome, Brazil, strategic for the promotion of food and nutrition security. We selected studies from the following databases: Web of Science, Medline/PubMed (via the National Library of Medicine), Scopus and Embrapa Agricultural Research Databases (BDPA). Eligible were original articles, published since 2008, studying food plants occurring in the Caatinga. We assessed the methodological quality of the studies we selected. We reviewed a total of fifteen studies in which 65 plants that met our inclusion criteria were mentioned. Of this amount, 17 species, including varieties, subspecies, and different parts of plants, had data on chemical composition, in addition to being mentioned as food consumed by rural communities in observational ethnobotanical studies. From the energy and protein data associated with these plants, we produced a ranking of strategic species. The plants with values higher than the average of the set were: Dioclea grandiflora Mart. ex Benth (mucunã), Hymenaea courbaril L. (jatobá), Syagrus cearensis Noblick (coco-catolé), Libidibia ferrea (Mart. ex Tul.) L.P.Queiroz (jucá), Sideroxylon obtusifolium (Roem. & Schult.) T.D.Penn. (quixabeira). We suggest that the scientific community concentrates research efforts on tree legumes, due to their resilience and physiological, nutritional, and culinary qualities.

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.

Objective: The current pandemic restarts a debate on permanently banning wildlife consumption in an effort to prevent further public health threats. In this commentary, we offer two ideas to enhance the discussion on foodborne zoonotic diseases in food systems.Design: First, we focus on the probable consequences that the loss of access to wildlife could cause to the status of food and nutrition security of many people in developing countries that rely on bushmeat to subsist. Second, we argue that all animal-based food systems, especially the ones based on intensive husbandry, present food safety threats.Conclusion: To ban the access to bushmeat without a rational analysis of all human meat production and consumption in the global animal-based food system will not help us to prevent future outbreaks.

Positive outcomes from community gardening contribute to the fulfilment of several agendas related to food and nutrition security, urban sustainability, and environmental education. Under this presupposition, several umbrella organisations in the public or nonprofit sectors have been supporting community garden projects. Bottom-up with political and/or administrative support is a governance model in community gardening in which the community plans, implements, and manages a garden with support from the government or non-governmental organisations. Several community gardens in Toronto, Canada, follow this governance structure, which is frequently associated with the success (growing and longevity) of these gardens’ initiatives in the city. This paper provides a better understanding of day-to-day needs in community gardening projects under this governance model, presenting the typical demands for support in different development stages. Using participatory observation and interviews, we approached community gardening initiatives spread in neighbourhoods with diverse economic, social, and cultural features. We interviewed gardeners, garden coordinators, representatives of non-governmental organisations, and government members. Considering the emic perspective, the governance structure that counts with administrative support seems beneficial to the longevity of community gardens, mainly in low-income areas. Despite the diversity of the projects that we studied, land access, funding, help with human resources, and educational opportunities are typical needs in these gardens. Future studies could specify the tradeoffs between bottom-up and top-down governance models in community gardening in distinct political and socio-economic contexts.