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1. Examining local food deserts using visual analytics

   https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1003957  

   Washington, Henry ; Jiang, Steven ; Davis, Lauren ; Nam Kim, Hyung ( January 2023 , AHFE International)

   Food insecurity, an economic and social condition where households have limited access to nutritious food, is a long-standing and growing problem in both the rural and urban areas of the United States. Food deserts refer to areas that do not have adequate food access to affordable and nutritious food. Food deserts can be characterized by availability, accessibility, accommodation, affordability, and acceptability (5A’s). This research investigates food deserts in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, which includes the city of Charlotte. The food insecure population estimate in Mecklenburg County is about 15% which is higher than the national average of 11%. Using visual analytics, a combination of analytics and human factors, this study aims to examine how age, education, and income are related to food deserts in Mecklenburg County. Data gathered from US Census Bureau was used for analysis. Results indicated that education and food desert status, and age and food desert status in Mecklenburg County were related.

    

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2. County-level analysis of current local capacity of agriculture to meet household demand: a dietary requirements perspective

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5208  

   Nixon, Peter ; Ramaswami, Anu ( April 2022 , Environmental Research Letters)

   With the goal of informing local food-action planning, this paper develops the first county-level database detailing agrifood consumption and production across 3114 counties in the United States. The database covers 12 070 food items that comprise the entire diet, mapping them to the production demand of 95 agrifood commodities. Agrifood demand is delineated further into fresh and processed components, along with characterization of animal feed, and compared with local food production to yield the current local agrifood capacity (CLC). CLC results are shown for individual agrifoods and for aggregated categories (e.g., on average, 0.03 for fruits and nuts, 0.24 for vegetables, 0.31 for non-meat animal products) across all US counties. CLC results for the entire diet find that a large proportion of US counties can be self-sufficient in individual agrifood commodities (ranging from <0.5% of counties for agrifoods like hops, papayas, and artichokes to 59% of counties for beef), and 23% of US counties can supply over half of their total human dietary demand through local production, but only 9% of the US population resides in these counties. Such granular, subnational baselines are essential to inform future goal-setting for urban agriculture.

    

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3. Polydimethylsiloxane Replicas Efficacy for Simulating Fresh Produce Surfaces and Application in Mechanistic Study of Colloid Retention

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.14479  

   Sun, Taozhu ; Lazouskaya, Volha ; Jin, Yan ( February 2019 , Journal of Food Science)

   Foodborne illnesses associated with fresh produce have attracted increasing attention in the food industry, scientific and public health communities. Studies have shown that surface properties of fresh produce can affect bacterial attachment and colonization, yet the mechanisms involved remain poorly understood. In our previous work, using colloids as bacterial surrogates, we demonstrated that colloid retention on fresh produce was controlled by water retention/distribution on produce surfaces, which were in turn governed by produce surface properties. However, high variabilities among the natural samples and multiple factors that were simultaneously involved made it difficult for interpreting the results and in pinpointing the mechanisms responsible for the observed colloid retention behavior. To better evaluate the mechanisms, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) replicas of tomato, lettuce, and spinach were fabricated and compared with fresh produce surfaces in this study. The PDMS replicas thoroughly preserved the surface topographical features of their natural counterparts while having identical chemical properties (for example, hydrophobicity), thus, allowing for the separation of surface topography/roughness and hydrophobicity effects. We found that residual water retention/distribution and colloid retention on the PDMS replicas were consistent with the results observed on the corresponding fresh produce surfaces, but had smaller deviations from the respective means when compared to the natural surfaces. The use of PDMS replicas improved experimental reproducibility, and enabled differentiation on the effects of surface hydrophobicity and surface roughness on colloid retention, thus, allowed more rigorous elucidation of the underlying mechanisms. Therefore, PDMS replicas could be used as surrogates of fresh produce for mechanistic studies of surface‐bacteria interactions.

   This work demonstrates the feasibility of using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to simulate fresh produce surfaces for studying interactions between produce surfaces and colloids, including bacteria. Although it is more realistic to use fruit or vegetable surfaces, the difficulties of working with natural surfaces that are heterogeneous and variable hinder systematic and mechanistic studies. The use of PDMS replicas can eliminate these difficulties and improve experimental reproducibility. This study demonstrated that PDMS replicas could adequately represent the topographical features of natural produce surfaces; the results on colloid retention provided insight into fresh produce contamination and the development of effective decontamination strategies.

    

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4. Water shortage risks from perennial crop expansion in California’s Central Valley

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4035  

   Mall, Natalie K. ; Herman, Jonathan D. ( October 2019 , Environmental Research Letters)

   California’s Central Valley is one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions. Its high-value fruit, vegetable, and nut crops rely on surface water imports from a vast network of reservoirs and canals as well as groundwater, which has been substantially overdrafted to support irrigation. The region has undergone a shift to perennial (tree and vine) crops in recent decades, which has increased water demand amid a series of severe droughts and emerging regulations on groundwater pumping. This study quantifies the expansion of perennial crops in the Tulare Lake Basin, the southern region of the Central Valley with limited natural water availability. A gridded crop type dataset is compiled on a 1 mi²spatial resolution from a historical database of pesticide permits over the period 1974–2016 and validated against aggregated county-level data. This spatial dataset is then analyzed by irrigation district, the primary spatial scale at which surface water supplies are determined, to identify trends in planting decisions and agricultural water demand over time. Perennial crop acreage has nearly tripled over this period, and currently accounts for roughly 60% of planted area and 80% of annual revenue. These trends show little relationship with water availability and have been driven primarily by market demand. From this data, we focus on the increasing minimum irrigation needs each year to sustain perennial crops. Results indicate that under a range of plausible future regulations on groundwater pumping ranging from 10% to 50%, water supplies may fail to consistently meet demands, increasing losses by up to 30% of annual revenues. More broadly, the datasets developed in this work will support the development of dynamic models of the integrated water-agriculture system under uncertain climate and regulatory changes to understand the combined impacts of water supply shortages and intensifying irrigation demand.

    

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5. Large-scale diet tracking data reveal disparate associations between food environment and diet

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27522-y  

   Althoff, Tim ; Nilforoshan, Hamed ; Hua, Jenna ; Leskovec, Jure ( December 2022 , Nature Communications)

   Abstract An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer 1–4 . Limited access to healthy food options may contribute to unhealthy diets 5,6 . Studying diets is challenging, typically restricted to small sample sizes, single locations, and non-uniform design across studies, and has led to mixed results on the impact of the food environment 7–23 . Here we leverage smartphones to track diet health, operationalized through the self-reported consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, fast food and soda, as well as body-mass index status in a country-wide observational study of 1,164,926 U.S. participants (MyFitnessPal app users) and 2.3 billion food entries to study the independent contributions of fast food and grocery store access, income and education to diet health outcomes. This study constitutes the largest nationwide study examining the relationship between the food environment and diet to date. We find that higher access to grocery stores, lower access to fast food, higher income and college education are independently associated with higher consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, lower consumption of fast food and soda, and lower likelihood of being affected by overweight and obesity. However, these associations vary significantly across zip codes with predominantly Black, Hispanic or white populations. For instance, high grocery store access has a significantly larger association with higher fruit and vegetable consumption in zip codes with predominantly Hispanic populations (7.4% difference) and Black populations (10.2% difference) in contrast to zip codes with predominantly white populations (1.7% difference). Policy targeted at improving food access, income and education may increase healthy eating, but intervention allocation may need to be optimized for specific subpopulations and locations. 

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