This month’s nutrition corner highlights research findings recently published in Lancet Planetary Health, one of the leading academic journals in the area of sustainable development and global environmental change.

In this study, researchers used economic modelling to quantify the gap between future fruit and vegetable supply and recommended consumption levels, for more than 150 countries, from 1961 to 2050. It was found that future supply will be insufficient to achieve recommended levels in many countries. Likewise, the result for Ghana show that, the ratio of fruit and vegetable availability as compared to WHO recommendation for fruit and vegetable intake is less than 1. In other words, the supply of fruits and vegetable has not met the demand in Ghana, and projections conclude that this will not change in the next two decades.

The research article concludes that: ‘Diets—and low fruit and vegetable consumption—are associated with the most important causes of premature mortality globally. Shifting towards healthier diets rich in nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables could lead to a win-win scenario for public and ecological health’. As a way forward the authors argue that ‘systematic public policy targeting the constraints to producing and consuming fruits and vegetables will be needed. This will require a portfolio of interventions and investments that focus on increasing fruit and vegetable production, developing processing and storage technologies and practices to reduce waste without increasing the consumer cost, and increasing existing efforts to educate consumers on healthy diets. These research findings confirm the urgency and importance of projects such as HortiFresh.