MICROBIOME: THE MISSING LINK? SCIENCE AND INNOVATION FOR HEALTH, CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS HOW CAN WE TRANSFORM OUR DIETS THESE ARE BIG QUESTIONS! AND FOOD SYSTEMS TO SOLVE HARD-CORE The world is afloat with views on PROBLEMS OF UNDERNOURISHMENT, how best to go about these issues. WHILE AT THE SAME TIME TACKLING THE Unfortunately, the fact is that we have so far not been very successful in resolving EMERGING PANDEMIC OF OBESITY AND any of these issues in a significant way. DIET-RELATED NON-COMMUNICABLE Beyond the point of lack of political DISEASES? commitment, this fact also begs the question whether there is maybe something amiss in our understanding of the causes of these problems. HOW WILL WE BE ABLE TO FEED Are we overlooking something? 10 BILLION PEOPLE BY 2050 WITHOUT DESTROYING OUR NATURAL RESOURCE BASE? CAN WE STOP AND POSSIBLY EVEN REVERSE THE LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION, The views expressed in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Food AND CLIMATE CHANGE? and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 2 In search for answers, an informal group The group has since evolved in an inter- of people got together first to look into the disciplinary team that is focusing on question about alternative explanations for a systematic review of transformative the obesity and non-communicable diseases scientific research into the role of the (NCDs) pandemic. A review of recent microbiome in nutrition and health, scientific literature showed how gut dysbiosis, agriculture and food systems, and an imbalance in the gut microbiome, is the bioeconomy at large. This note a common factor in obesity and various outlines some preliminary findings, diet-related NCDs. A further search for implications and opportunities with the factors that can cause dysbiosis led to idea of stimulating further thinking and the identification of a variety of possible exploration. causative factors, including lifestyle factors, The team currently consists of: use of antibiotics, diet composition, the Karel Callens, bio engineer by training and presence of various chemical compounds in Deputy Strategic Programme Leader, Food our food, etc. Some of these compounds can Security and Nutrition; Catherine Bessy, enter our food as agro-chemicals used during agronomist and food scientist and Food production, or additives used in processing Safety officer;Anne Bogdanski, biologist and transformation. Others, like mycotoxins by training and Natural Resources officer; are the result of poor practices. Fanette Fontaine, Associate professor of This finding led the group to expand its microbiology; Ceren Gurkan, economist exploration to the role of the microbiomes by training and Programme Officer; Sarah of for example animals, plants, soils, rivers, Nájera Espinosa, Food Safety consultant, oceans, etc. and how their disturbance with a background in environmental could affect for example soil fertility, carbon science; Dylan Warren Raffa, plant and soil sequestration, plant and animal growth and expert and PhD Fellow on Agrobiodiversity; health, etc. and Susan Grooters, epidemiologist. 3 CHALLENGES DEMOGRAPHIC MALNUTRITION SHIFTS Obesity and NCDs NATURAL RESOURCE CLIMATE DEGRADATION CHANGE BIODIVERSITY LOSS SHIFTS IN DIETS 4 LOOKING FOR THE BEST PATH TOWARDS NOURISHING 10 BILLION PEOPLE Unhealthy diets now pose a greater risk to Even though we waste roughly over a third of morbidity and mortality than unsafe sex, all food produced worldwide, there remains alcohol, and drug and tobacco use combined. enough to feed everyone. Yet hunger persists They are at the root of the global obesity and and malnutrition is on the rise. While poverty diet-related non-communicable disease (NCD) and inequality play a big part, something even pandemic. The ways of food production that more fundamental is amiss. The natural world, lead to these unhealthy diets also pose a the bedrock of poor people’s livelihoods, and major threat to climate stability and ecosystem arguably our global economy, is under severe resilience, and constitute the most important pressure. This is likely the biggest challenge driver of environmental degradation and natural defining the twenty-first century. Climate resources depletion. change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and other forms of manmade environmental Malnutrition comes in different forms. While damage demonstrate how our food system is nearly a third of the world’s population is mining nature, and in the process undermining overweight or obese, one out of nine people its very foundation. While the poor are the first remains undernourished, and more than one out to experience the consequences, there is a of three suffers from micronutrient deficiencies. growing ripple effect throughout the global food Three quarters of all deaths globally are due system and society. to NCDs, and three quarters of all NCD-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income Although poverty levels have steadily gone countries. People often suffer from multiple down, we are on a trajectory where poverty forms of malnutrition and diet-related health reduction risks following the same path as problems over their lifetime and sometimes malnutrition, slowing down after a period even at the same time. of relative improvement. Inequality, a key 5 determinant of poverty, is already on the services. It entails the sustainable use of rise. A major factor in this relapse are the renewable biomass and efficient bioprocesses hidden environmental and health costs to achieve sustainable production. In some of the economic growth and agricultural instances, it might also mean to conserve the intensification that have supported growth in biological resource base rather than using it. food supplies and incomes. It relies on the use of enabling and converging technologies, including biotechnology; and it We are on a path where we are degrading our requires integration of policies and actions natural resource base, including its biological across agriculture, health and other sectors resources, to the point where major disruptions and industries. in our food system and in the socio-economic fabric of society will inevitably force the In the short term, there is little that we can system to change. We are at a crossroads: the do to curb the global demand for food and choice is between doing nothing, risking our other products that depend on biological future food security and health, or deciding to resources. Demand will continue to rise as take action, whereby action means radically the world population grows to ten billion rethinking our food system from a sustainable before eventually shrinking again. However, bioeconomy perspective. by taking a bioeconomy approach, we can alter the nature of this demand and the Bioeconomy is about exploiting synergies processes through which the food system and and considering hard trade-offs between the bioeconomy meet that demand. This approach food system and other parts of the economy could accommodate the necessary increases that depend on biological resources and in agricultural production, without continuing processes for the production of goods and to degrade our natural resource base. 6 SMALL THINGS CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE Bioscience is uncovering the pathways and live. Perhaps the most critical discovery to common drivers behind the triple challenge date is that microbiome diversity, rather than of obesity and NCDs, climate change, and any particular microorganism, is at the root of biodiversity loss. In the process, microbiology microbiome ecosystem resilience, including and the inter-disciplinary study of the the resilience of the human body to withstand microbiome have rediscovered microorganisms stress and disease. as a vast and untapped natural resource with Within the sphere of human health, gut great potential to shift the balance of the dysbiosis, or the loss of microbiome ‘nature – food systems – people’ equation back diversity and shifts in the composition of the into the healthy zone. microorganisms populating the gut, can result The microbiome refers to the combined in loss or alteration of a healthy microbiome. genetic material of all microorganisms living Dysbiosis affects various functions, including in a given ecosystem, including in the human digestion, energy metabolism, immunity, body. Current estimates put the total number intestinal permeability and brain function. The of different microbial species at one trillion, link between gut dysbiosis and obesity and of which we currently only know about 0.001 food related NCDs like diabetes, cancer, heart percent. Because of the convergence of disease, allergy, irritable bowel syndrome, etc. is techniques across computing, bio-engineering now established. and genomics, we are now able to detect and Microbiome research is adding depth to our study this wealth of microbial species that, up understanding of nutrition, and of how diets and until very recently, were undetectable. food products, mediated by the gut microbiome, The diversity of microorganisms surpasses by affect human health. The gut microbiome far the diversity of all the other living organisms metabolizes certain food components not on earth. They perform many, often critical, digested by the human gut, making a large functions in the ecosystems in which they variety of metabolites available for human 7 cells to digest further, or for other microbes and in the continuous regeneration of the to use. Much of