On 2 July 2024, the project SYSTEMIC and their funders met for the final meeting of this multidisciplinary initiative. The aim of the Knowledge Hub on Food and Nutrition Security was to foster transnational and multidisciplinary collaboration and networking to accelerate, further characterise and manage the impact of climate change on nutritional make-up of food, and to propose adaptive strategies to secure food and nutrition.
The Knowledge Hub on Food and Nutrition Security was launched in January 2019 and a joint call among participating countries resulted in the SYSTEMIC project. The project, started in July 2020, connects researchers with other existing initiatives and relevant stakeholders of Food and Nutrition Security research. The approach consists of a modelling component and an intervention component. The project organised a final seminar in Madrid in March 2024 and its final meeting in July 2024.
SYSTEMIC has worked holistically on the food-nutrition-climate nexus. It aimed to better understand how climatic trends affect diets and nutrition, how climate change influences food and feed production, what drives consumer behaviour and diet choice, and how to connect policies on public health and environment. Outputs from the project include databases on climate models and collections of datasets, white papers and recommendations on everything from how climate change influences socio-economic inputs to the most healthy and sustainable human diets.
The aquatic dimension has been particularly present in the work on improved ingredients in aquaculture feed, new sources of proteins and consumer acceptance of more sustainable diets. Fuel and feed are the two drivers of aquaculture emissions, and when improving feeds both human, animal and environmental health must be considered.
To reduce the dependence on meat and cattle, new sources of proteins must be found. A promising aquatic food source is microalgae. The degree of acceptability by consumers depends on the traditional diet of the population; for western populations, microalgae are still not a common food ingredient, but the sensory characteristics of microalgae can be modulated. In Europe, microalgae production is still limited by technological, regulatory, and market-related barriers. The European legislation is in fact one of the main barriers to using microalgae as a novel protein source.
Reducing meat consumption in human diet clearly benefits health and sustainability. Comparing vegan, ovolacto and pescatarian, the biggest difference depended on whether the plant-based foods are regarded as ultra-processed or not. It was considered that the least dramatic behavioural change was needed for people eating meat to change to a pescatarian diet.
The multidisciplinary work of SYSTEMIC has created connections across disciplines, across Europe and across the land-sea border. With an impressive number of scientific publications and more white papers in preparation, the impact of SYSTEMIC is already evident. In addition, the partners are already exploring new opportunities for collaboration.