The health, environmental, and economic dimensions of future dietary transitions in Argentina.

Diets link human health with environmental sustainability, offering promising pressure points to enhance the sustainability of food systems. We investigated the health, environmental, and economic dimensions of the current diet in Argentina and the possible effects of six dietary change scenarios on nutrient adequacy, dietary quality, food expenditure, and six environmental impact categories (i.e., GHG emissions, total land occupation, cropland use, fossil energy use, freshwater consumption, and the emission of eutrophying pollutants). Current dietary patterns are unhealthy, unsustainable, and relatively expensive, and all things being equal, an increase in income levels would not alter the health dimension, but increase environmental impacts by 33-38%, and costs by 38%. Compared to the prevailing diet, the six healthier diet alternatives could improve health with an expenditure between + 27% (National Dietary Guidelines) to -5% (vegan diet) of the current diet. These dietary changes could result in trade-offs between different environmental impacts. Plant-based diets showed the lowest overall environmental impact, with GHG emissions and land occupation reduced by up to 79% and 88%, respectively, without significant changes in cropland demand. However, fossil energy use and freshwater consumption could increase by up to 101% and 220%, respectively. The emission of eutrophying pollutants could increase by up to 54% for all healthy diet scenarios, except for the vegan one (18% decrease). We conclude that the health and environmental crisis that Argentina (and other developing countries) currently face could be mitigated by adopting healthy diets (particularly plant-based), bringing in the process benefits to both people and nature. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-021-01087-7.

Quality and environmental footprints of diets by socio-economic status in Argentina.

Food consumption and production plays a major role on human health and environmental sustainability. In addition, socio-economic status (SES) could be an important determinant on these impacts. Here we investigated the quality and environmental footprints of diets of different SES in Argentina. Dietary data was obtained from a recent national-wide representative survey (21,547 households), and individual intake was estimated by applying the Adult-Male Equivalent (AME) approach. Dietary quality was assessed by comparing the apparent consumption of foods and nutrients with the level of intake associated with the lowest risk of mortality, and applying the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010). The environmental footprints were assessed with a set of six environmental indicators: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, total land occupation, cropland demand, fossil energy use, freshwater consumption and eutrophying emissions. Per capita total expenditure was utilized as an indicator of SES. We found a suboptimal intake of healthy and excess of unhealthy foods and nutrients in all SES, as well as a low AHEI-2010 score (34.7 ± 3.56 over 100). Regarding environmental footprints per AME, we estimated 8.91 ± 2.49 kg CO2-eq/day for GHG emissions, 9.30 ± 2.93 MJ/day for fossil energy use, 54.2 ± 14.8 m2/day for total land occupation, 7.07 ± 1.90 m2/day for cropland demand, 205 ± 65.3 L/day for freshwater consumption and 19.8 ± 6.43 g PO4-eq/day for eutrophying emissions. The Argentinian diet was found to be both unhealthy and unsustainable in all socio-economic levels.

Energy and carbon footprints of chicken and pork from intensive production systems in Argentina.

Due to the heterogeneity and complexity of food systems, there is a need to increase the knowledge on environmental impacts of regional productions by performing studies in a transparent manner, so that researchers could compare and accurately adapt such data to assess mitigation strategies. With the exception of beef, chicken and pork are the most consumed meats in Argentina and their consumption is expected to continuing increasing. However, despite the growing importance of chicken and pork industry, no studies on environmental impact of these products have been conducted to date in this country. Performing a life cycle inventory with data derived from government statistical publications, academia and communications with industry, the present study aims to investigate the energy and carbon footprints per ton of live weight (LW) of chickens and pigs from intensive production systems at farm gate in Argentina. In addition, we discussed in detail the effects on energy and carbon footprints of two animal diets which comprise different soybean by-products commonly used in animal husbandry, namely expeller-extruded soybean meal and solvent-extracted soybean meal and oil. We found that the energy and carbon footprint at farm gate for chicken was 13.6-15.1 GJ/ton LW and 2.03-2.22 ton CO2-eq/ton LW, for pigs in hoop systems 23.2-24.0 GJ/ton LW and 5.14-5.17 ton CO2-eq/ton LW, and for pigs in confinement systems 23.6-24.2 GJ/ton LW and 6.06-6.45 ton CO2-eq/ton LW, respectively. The choice of expeller-extruded soybean meal or solvent-extracted soybean meal and oil as feed ingredients showed small differences on the energy and carbon footprints of chickens and pigs.

Potential contributions of food consumption patterns to climate change.

Anthropogenic warming is caused mainly by emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, with agriculture as a main contributor for the latter 2 gases. Other parts of the food system contribute carbon dioxide emissions that emanate from the use of fossil fuels in transportation, processing, retailing, storage, and preparation. Food items differ substantially when GHG emissions are calculated from farm to table. A recent study of approximately 20 items sold in Sweden showed a span of 0.4 to 30 kg CO(2) equivalents/kg edible product. For protein-rich food, such as legumes, meat, fish, cheese, and eggs, the difference is a factor of 30 with the lowest emissions per kilogram for legumes, poultry, and eggs and the highest for beef, cheese, and pork. Large emissions for ruminants are explained mainly by methane emissions from enteric fermentation. For vegetables and fruits, emissions usually are

Differential production of angiostatin by concomitant antitumoral resistance-inducing cancer cells.

The phenomenon by which tumor-bearing hosts are capable of inhibiting secondary tumor implants or metastases, known as concomitant antitumoral resistance (CAR), is presumably due to antiangiogenesis at places distant from the primary tumor. Although angiostatin, a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis, has been reported to be one of the factors responsible for suppressing the growth of secondary tumors in mice bearing previous tumors, it has not been definitively proven yet. With the aim of investigating whether CAR-inducing cancer cells display a differential angiostatin production and to support the role ascribed to that molecule concerning the inhibition of secondary tumor implants, 5 tumor models with different CAR-inducing capacities were studied herein. One of the 2 human lung cancer cell lines analyzed revealed a strong CAR against secondary s.c. tumor implants in nude mice, and 2 of 3 of the murine mammary tumors used exhibited inhibitory effect on secondary s.c. and i.v. tumor inoculations in syngeneic hosts. Since angiostatin is a proteolytic fragment from plasminogen, we examined by Western blot the ability of all conditioned media collected from the tumor cells studied to convert plasminogen to angiostatin. An association between in vivo generation of CAR and in vitro conversion of plasminogen into angiostatin was found. Since different enzymatic mechanisms were described to explain the generation of angiostatin, we also studied gelatinase and urokinase-type plasminogen activator secretion in conditioned media by zymography. The conversion of plasminogen into angiostatin by conditioned media was mainly inhibited by broad-spectrum serine proteinase inhibitors, suggesting a possible role for 1 or more enzymes of that group in the process. These findings suggest the existence of a differential angiostatin generation by CAR-inducing cancer cells, providing additional support to previous data obtained by other authors.