How can fish and seafood address food and climate challenges?
How canfish and seafoodaddress the challenges of food andclimate?
Blue foods – those that come from oceans, seas or freshwater environments – have enormous potential to help address many global challenges. By carefully implementing policies that take advantage of these foods, countries can support their efforts to reduce food deficits, reduce the risks of many diseases, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and ensure resilience to climate change.
A team of researchers from the Blue Food Assessment initiative, an international collaboration of scientists specializing in the effects of blue food on global food systems, strongly agree. In a research paper published in the journal Nature, scientists concluded that there are significant global benefits when adding more fish and seafood to the global diet.
Unappreciated and untapped benefit
Although people around the world depend on and enjoy seafood, the potential of these blue foods to benefit people and the environment remains underutilized and underappreciated, which the research team tried to draw attention to, by highlighting the transformative benefits that these blue foods can provide in people’s lives and in the environments in which they live.
Based on the “Blue Food Evaluation” initiative, the new study collected the results of the evaluation and translated them into four objectives related to nutrition, a healthy environment, and livelihoods. The research team reported that aquatic foods are rich in many essential nutrients, especially vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids, as their deficiency is relatively high worldwide, especially in African and South American countries, and increasing consumption of Blue foods in these areas can reduce malnutrition, especially for vulnerable groups, such as young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and women of reproductive age.
At the same time, the incidence of cardiovascular disease – a condition linked to excessive consumption of red meat – is mostly high in wealthy, developed countries in North America and Europe; Therefore, promoting more fish and seafood in these countries can contribute to reducing dependence on red meat, and thus contribute to reducing the risks and rates of heart disease.
The importance of blue foods
More blue food could also lead to a sustainable, more environmentally friendly diet. Given that the production of aquatic foods results in relatively less environmental stress than the production of red and poultry meat, this means that a shift towards more blue foods could reduce the environmental damage resulting from the production of livestock, such as cattle, sheep and goats.
According to researchers, fish farming and fishing can also provide job opportunities that ensure the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world, which means improving economic conditions in many developing countries that suffer from poverty, malnutrition, and high unemployment.
By thoughtfully implementing blue food policies that reduce barriers to fish and seafood production, countries can benefit – to varying degrees – from many aspects at once, from improved public health, access to a sustainable food system, as well as a better ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
The new study on the benefits of blue foods could allow decision makers to explore the blue food policies most relevant to their national situation, and use these policies to overcome environmental and food challenges.
It is worth noting that this study is the latest in a series of research papers published by scientists of the “Blue Food Evaluation” initiative, and it has been thoroughly peer-reviewed in an attempt to understand the potential of blue foods in the current and future global food system, and to help inform and guide the policies that will shape the future of global food chains.
Blue Foods and Egypt
Despite what we discussed in the previous lines of the great benefits that countries can benefit from when they increase their reliance on blue foods, some countries suffer from geographical conditions that prevent this, such as landlocked countries, which are countries that do not have any coastlines and are completely surrounded by land, while others are characterized by views of seas and oceans, and among the latter – fortunately – Egypt.
Egypt’s distinguished geographical location has a view of the Red and White Bahrain, in addition to the Nile River and natural and artificial lakes, and this can be translated into enormous wealth of blue food; Therefore, it would not be strange for fish and seafood to become a popular and staple food, but this is still far from the reality.
There is no doubt that our reliance – mainly – on red and poultry meat has consequently led to an increase in demand for it, and with time the inability to meet these rates has emerged and we have resorted to imports, which is a solution that is no longer appropriate in light of the need to provide foreign currency. Given the political and economic turmoil the world is witnessing.
The great blue wealth that God bestowed on Egypt represents a promising solution to many problems, and it can also reformulate the Egyptians’ diet in a way that ensures proper nutrition and prevention of many diseases, in addition to supporting the local economy by providing job opportunities and reducing the import of red and poultry meat, as well as exporting Egyptian blue food products abroad.
