Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Nat Food. 2023 Oct;4(10):886-893. doi: 10.1038/s43016-023-00852-4. Epub 2023 Oct 9.
Food trade is generally perceived to increase the availability and diversity of foods available to consumers, but there is little empirical evidence on its implications for human health. Here we show that a substantial proportion of dietary risks and diet-related mortality worldwide is attributable to international food trade and that whether the contributions of food trade are positive or negative depends on the types of food traded. Using bilateral trade data for 2019 and food-specific risk-disease relationships, we estimate that imports of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts improved dietary risks in the importing countries and were associated with a reduction in mortality from non-communicable diseases of ~1.4 million deaths globally. By contrast, imports of red meat aggravated dietary risks in the importing countries and were associated with an increase of ~150,000 deaths. The magnitude of our findings suggests that considering impacts on dietary risks will become an important aspect of health-sensitive trade and agriculture policies, and of policy responses to disruptions in food chains.
食品贸易通常被认为增加了消费者可获得的食品的供应和多样性，但关于其对人类健康的影响，实证证据很少。在这里，我们表明，世界范围内相当一部分饮食风险和与饮食相关的死亡率可归因于国际食品贸易，而食品贸易的贡献是积极的还是消极的取决于贸易的食品类型。我们使用 2019 年的双边贸易数据和特定于食品的风险-疾病关系，估计水果、蔬菜、豆类和坚果的进口改善了进口国的饮食风险，并与全球约 140 万人因非传染性疾病导致的死亡人数减少有关。相比之下，肉类的进口加剧了进口国的饮食风险，并与约 15 万人的死亡人数增加有关。我们研究结果的重要性表明，考虑饮食风险的影响将成为健康敏感型贸易和农业政策以及应对食物链中断的政策反应的一个重要方面。
