Dietary Fats, Human Nutrition and the Environment: Balance and Sustainability

Breastfeeding: science and knowledge in pediatric obesity prevention

The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity worldwide is a significant concern due to its link to severe health issues in adulthood, such as non-communicable diseases (NCDs). To address this issue, this review evaluates the effectiveness of various preventive measures for childhood obesity, focusing on maternal nutrition and breastfeeding. The study underscores the criticality of the periconceptional period, where the diets of both parents can influence epigenetic modifications that impact the child's metabolic pathways and obesity risks. Breastfeeding is a potent protective mechanism against early-onset obesity, significantly enhancing the infant's metabolic and immune health by modifying DNA methylation and gene expression. Furthermore, the perspective underscores the significance of the Mediterranean diet during the periconceptional period and lactation. This diet can effectively prevent gestational complications and improve breast milk quality, fostering optimal infant development. Recognizing that obesity results from genetic, epigenetic, environmental, and social factors, the paper advocates for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach from the earliest stages of life. This approach champions a balanced maternal diet, exclusive breastfeeding, and timely introduction to complementary foods. In conclusion, addressing pediatric obesity requires a multifaceted strategy emphasizing improving prenatal and postnatal nutrition. Further research is necessary to understand the epigenetic mechanisms influenced by nutrition and their long-term effects on children's health. This will help refine interventions that curb the obesity epidemic among future generations.

What should I eat today? Evidence, guidelines, dietary patterns and consumer's behavior

Over the past century, dietary recommendations emphasizing food patterns as means to deliver essential nutrients have garnered widespread acceptance. The necessity for foods supplying vital nutrients and energy throughout various life stages requires the involvement of local resources and cultural practices to prevent nutrient deficiency diseases. Since the 1980s, dietary guidelines aimed at adverting chronic diseases have relied on epidemiological research to predict which dietary patterns correlate with reduced risk of chronic disease or links to health outcomes. Dietary guidelines have been broad, typically recommending avoiding excess or deficiency of single nutrients. Efforts to fine-tune these recommendations face challenges due to a scarcity of robust scientific data supporting more specific guidance across the life cycle. Consumers have become skeptical of dietary guidelines, because media coverage of new studies is often in conflict with accepted nutrition dogma. Indications to align individual and planet's health have been issued supporting the concept of sustainable dietary patterns. Whether we really have a science-based databank to support dietary guidelines is still a matter of ongoing debate, as presented in this paper.

Climate-based variability in the essential fatty acid composition of soybean oil

BACKGROUND

Soybean oil is a major dietary source of the essential fatty acids linoleic acid (LA) and α-linolenic acid (ALA); however, high-daytime temperatures during seed development reduce desaturase activity in soybeans. The resultant reduction in LA and ALA levels is a phenomenon well-known to soybean breeders, although the impact of this interaction between plants and environment on human nutrition is poorly understood.

OBJECTIVES

Using data from the literature, we developed a model for soybean essential fatty acid composition. Combining this model with contemporary agricultural and meteorological data sets, we determined whether insufficiency of essential fatty acids could result from geographic, intrayear, or interyear variability.

METHODS

We modeled this change using 233 data points from 16 studies that provided fatty acid composition data from plants grown under daytime high temperatures ranging from 15°C to 40°C.

RESULTS

As temperature increased, LA and ALA concentrations decreased from 55% to 30% and 13% to 3.5%, respectively. Application of the model to daytime high temperatures from 2 growth periods over 6 y showed significant regional, interyear, and intrayear variation in essential fatty acid content (P < 0.05). Using county yield data, we developed oil fatty acid models for the 3 top-producing regions of the United States. From this work, it was determined that soybean oil manufactured from soybeans in the southern United States may contain insufficient ALA to meet human nutritional needs because of high-daytime temperatures.

CONCLUSIONS

This work suggests that climate-based variation may result in many human populations not achieving an adequate daily intake of ALA.

Mycorrhizal mycelium as a global carbon pool

For more than 400 million years, mycorrhizal fungi and plants have formed partnerships that are crucial to the emergence and functioning of global ecosystems. The importance of these symbiotic fungi for plant nutrition is well established. However, the role of mycorrhizal fungi in transporting carbon into soil systems on a global scale remains under-explored. This is surprising given that ∼75% of terrestrial carbon is stored belowground and mycorrhizal fungi are stationed at a key entry point of carbon into soil food webs. Here, we analyze nearly 200 datasets to provide the first global quantitative estimates of carbon allocation from plants to the mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi. We estimate that global plant communities allocate 3.93 Gt CO₂e per year to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, 9.07 Gt CO₂e per year to ectomycorrhizal fungi, and 0.12 Gt CO₂e per year to ericoid mycorrhizal fungi. Based on this estimate, 13.12 Gt of CO₂e fixed by terrestrial plants is, at least temporarily, allocated to the underground mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi per year, equating to ∼36% of current annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels. We explore the mechanisms by which mycorrhizal fungi affect soil carbon pools and identify approaches to increase our understanding of global carbon fluxes via plant-fungal pathways. Our estimates, although based on the best available evidence, are imperfect and should be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless, our estimations are conservative, and we argue that this work confirms the significant contribution made by mycorrhizal associations to global carbon dynamics. Our findings should motivate their inclusion both within global climate and carbon cycling models, and within conservation policy and practice.

Sustainable nutrition and the case of vegetable oils to match present and future dietary needs

Sustainable nutrition represents a formidable challenge for providing people with healthy, nutritious and affordable food, while reducing waste and impacts on the environment. Acknowledging the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of the food system, this article addresses the main issues related to sustainability in nutrition, existing scientific data and advances in research and related methodologies. Vegetable oils are epitomized as a case study in order to figure out the challenges inherent to sustainable nutrition. Vegetable oils crucially provide people with an affordable source of energy and are essential ingredients of a healthy diet, but entail varying social and environmental costs and benefits. Accordingly, the productive and socioeconomic context encompassing vegetable oils requires interdisciplinary research based on appropriate analyses of big data in populations undergoing emerging behavioral and environmental pressures. Since oils represent a major and growing source of energy at a global level, their role in sustainable nutrition should be considered beyond pure nutritional facts, at the light of soil preservation, local resources and human needs in terms of health, employment and socio-economic development.

Fat Quality Impacts the Effect of a High-Fat Diet on the Fatty Acid Profile, Life History Traits and Gene Expression in Drosophila melanogaster

Feeding a high-fat diet (HFD) has been shown to alter phenotypic and metabolic parameters in Drosophila melanogaster. However, the impact of fat quantity and quality remains uncertain. We first used butterfat (BF) as an example to investigate the effects of increasing dietary fat content (3-12%) on male and female fruit flies. Although body weight and body composition were not altered by any BF concentration, health parameters, such as lifespan, fecundity and larval development, were negatively affected in a dose-dependent manner. When fruit flies were fed various 12% HFDs (BF, sunflower oil, olive oil, linseed oil, fish oil), their fatty acid profiles shifted according to the dietary fat qualities. Moreover, fat quality was found to determine the effect size of the response to an HFD for traits, such as lifespan, climbing activity, or fertility. Consistently, we also found a highly fat quality-specific transcriptional response to three exemplary HFD qualities with a small overlap of only 30 differentially expressed genes associated with the immune/stress response and fatty acid metabolism. In conclusion, our data indicate that not only the fat content but also the fat quality is a crucial factor in terms of life-history traits when applying an HFD in D. melanogaster.

The critical issue linking lipids and inflammation: Clinical utility of stopping oxidative stress

The formation of an atheroma begins when lipoproteins become trapped in the intima. Entrapped lipoproteins become oxidized and activate the innate immune system. This immunity represents the primary association between lipids and inflammation. When the trapping continues, the link between lipids and inflammation becomes chronic and detrimental, resulting in atherosclerosis. When entrapment ceases, the association between lipids and inflammation is temporary and healthy, and the atherogenic process halts. Therefore, the link between lipids and inflammation depends upon lipoprotein retention in the intima. The entrapment is due to electrostatic forces uniting apolipoprotein B to polysaccharide chains on intimal proteoglycans. The genetic transformation of contractile smooth muscle cells in the media into migratory secretory smooth muscle cells produces the intimal proteoglycans. The protein, platelet-derived growth factor produced by activated platelets, is the primary stimulus for this genetic change. Oxidative stress is the main stimulus to activate platelets. Therefore, minimizing oxidative stress would significantly reduce the retention of lipoproteins. Less entrapment decreases the association between lipids and inflammation. More importantly, it would halt atherogenesis. This review will analyze oxidative stress as the critical link between lipids, inflammation, and the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Through this perspective, we will discuss stopping oxidative stress to disrupt a harmful association between lipids and inflammation. Numerous therapeutic options will be discussed to mitigate oxidative stress. This paper will add a new meaning to the Morse code distress signal SOS-stopping oxidative stress.

Knowledge mapping of planetary boundaries based on bibliometrics analysis

The planetary boundaries concept has triggered a vast amount of pure and applied scientific research, as well as policy and governance activities globally. Indeed, it has rapidly become a centerpiece of sustainability study. It is crucial to review the scientific state of the planetary boundaries (PB) concept systematically. However, there is a lack of research on drawing a scientific investigation map of planetary boundaries. Therefore, to clarify the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics, research hotspots, and frontiers of planetary boundaries, a scientometric analysis was performed based on 530 academic publications on planetary boundaries from 2009 to 2021. This paper conducted the analysis by visualizing the social network, dual-map overlay, co-cited references, structure variation article, and co-occurrence keywords with CiteSpace. The results show that as a new achievement and paradigm in sustainable development research, the planetary boundaries framework is gradually getting global attention and promotion, which has increasingly become an interdisciplinary hot research topic. The most productive authors and institutions are concentrated in England, the USA, Germany, and Sweden. Relevant articles were mainly published in journals focusing on ecology, earth, marine, veterinary, animal, economics, and politics. In addition, we summarized four predominant research themes by clustering keywords: the calculation of single boundary threshold and present value, the integration with assessment methods such as life cycle assessment and footprint families, the downscaling of planetary boundaries, and the expansion to economic and social domains. For scholars who are interested in this topic, this paper would be a useful reference and guideline.