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Public Health Nutrition and Sustainability

August 01, 2015
Public Health Nutrition

Mark Lawrence, Barbara Burlingame, Martin Caraher, Michelle Holdsworth, Roni Neff and Lada Timotijevic

In public health nutrition, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain food system capacity to support the nutritional health needs of current and future populations while protecting the ecological systems that produce food. The FAO defines sustainable diets as those that are ‘protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources.