Healthy sustainable food patterns and systems: a planetary urgency

Food choice impacts human health and planetary sustainability. The feeding patterns that reduce risk factors for noncommunicable diseases and various mortality causes are recognized as healthy eating habits. The average world population is far from reaching these habits due to the lack of access to healthy foods and a high prevalence of malnutrition. Understanding the impact of healthy sustainable food systems is growing worldwide to reach food security for the global population and future generations. A systemic perspective of this concept includes the health and well-being of individuals and the environmental, economic, socio-cultural, public policies context, besides food, agriculture, and ecological sciences. We need to confront the menaces and challenges represented by the ongoing changes of our era, which strongly generate global food insecurity. This issue is relevant not only for human health but also for climate change and other threats, based on modifications in production, handling, and consumption of foods that consider health and welfare impact at individual and planetary levels. In this review, some key concepts related to healthy and sustainable food systems are presented.