Tropical fruit trees can improve health, reduce hunger, boost incomes and fight climate change. So why don’t we grow and eat more?
Tropical fruit trees can improve health, reduce hunger, boost incomes and fight climate change. So why don’t we grow and eat more? New research in People and Nature highlights the benefits of increasing tropical fruit consumption.
Two of humanity’s biggest problems – the climate crisis and abysmal eating habits – can partly be solved by one healthy solution: eating more food from trees, specifically tropical ones. While global trends in agriculture and diets are not easily reversed, scientists say that creating incentives to grow and eat more mangos, avocados and Brazil nuts – and dozens of tree-sourced foods most people have never heard of – can be both attainable and sustainable.
Writing in People and Nature, researchers outline the myriad nutritional, economic and environmental-health potential of increasing the production and consumption of tropical fruits. They present an overview of benefits from tree-sourced foods in terms of nutrition and discuss the barriers and risks of scaling up supply to a global level.
Read more at: British Ecological Society
A view of an agroforestry production system in Lampung province, Indonesia in 2017. (Photo Credit: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR))
