The complex relationship between environmental health, sustainable diets, and nutritional epidemiology is crucial for understanding interactions and promoting healthy and sustainable dietary patterns. Nutritional epidemiology plays a vital role in analyzing these patterns, offering a more holistic view of diet quality and considering the synergistic effects of foods, as well as the complex interaction between nutrients. There are various indices that assess diet quality or adherence to healthy and sustainable dietary patterns, such as the Mediterranean Diet, Healthy Plant-Based Diet, Pro-Vegetarian Diet, and EAT-Lancet, which have been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases, among others. To advance the comprehensive capture of the diet, the analysis of dietary patterns must consider additional aspects such as diet sustainability and its environmental impact. By doing so, we can develop more comprehensive approaches that promote both human and planetary health. Since dietary patterns can reflect broader lifestyle patterns, it is necessary to incorporate potentially relevant factors related to diet, such as sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors, as well as genes and biological factors.

This Research Topic focuses on the need to integrate environmental sustainability into the analysis of healthy dietary patterns. While nutritional epidemiology has advanced in understanding the health impacts of diets, it is crucial to also consider how these dietary patterns affect the environment. Recent advances include the development of new indices that combine diet quality with sustainability and the application of advanced statistical methods to analyze the complex interactions between diet, health, and sustainability. This research topic aims to publish studies supporting the associations between healthy and sustainable dietary patterns and the risk of diseases relevant to public health, with special attention to developing countries.

We invite original research and review articles for this special call, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Use of indices of nutrient-rich, affordable, healthy, and sustainable dietary patterns and their relationship with the risk of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and/or neurodegenerative diseases in disadvantaged populations.

• Use of novel statistical methods and advanced analytical techniques in dietary pattern analyses.

• Evaluation of educational strategies promoting the adoption of sustainable dietary patterns in different cultural and socioeconomic contexts.

• Development of new methodologies and tools to assess the sustainability of different dietary patterns.

• Systematic reviews with high rigor that critically explore the evidence of sustainable dietary patterns and their effects on cardiovascular health outcomes or neurodegenerative diseases.

• Studies on how dietary patterns affect the metabolome and their relationship with disease prevention and food sustainability.

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Nutrition

Submit your idea

Impact