New Research Proposes Public Health Shift: Change Agricultural Production To Make Staple Foods Healthier

A new study from an SDSU researcher advocates improving wheat and other staple foods through agricultural techniques, making the food people love to eat healthier.

Ali Parsaeimehr, assistant research professor in South Dakota State University's Department of Biology and Microbiology, is a leading co-author in an effort to find new ways to boost public health without relying on individuals to give up foods they love. This shift to make staple foods healthier is a goal of the Foundation for Innovation in Healthy Food, whose members are co-authors.

In the paper “Toward an Emerging Public Health Paradigm: Agriculture and Food Production for
Health,” Parsaeimehr collaborated with 52 other researchers. They detailed a plan to revitalize the public health paradigm by making systemic changes to food production in order to make the food we eat healthier.

"This paper reflects our commitment to shifting public health from an individual responsibility model toward a systems-based approach, in which agricultural innovation and food production play a direct role in preventing chronic disease," Parsaeimehr said.

For decades, chronic disease has continued to plague populations globally, in part a result of nutritionally insufficient diets. Despite efforts to encourage consumers to make changes to their lifestyles individually, health care systems continue to bear the strain.

Aiming to reduce the prevalence of chronic disease, the researchers suggest that scientists and agriculture professionals work together to increase the nutritional value of crops with wheat as an example. Specifically increasing the fiber content of wheat through plant breeding and production could be a first step to enhance the nutritional value of wheat.

In this paper, wheat is used as a case study to introduce the idea that these agricultural changes can be made and expanded to other crops like rice, corn, potatoes, sorghum and plantains.
Researchers assert that by changing the fiber content of wheat, there could be improved health changes on a population scale because wheat-based foods are the source of 20% of global energy and 30% of U.S. dietary fiber intake. This simple improvement could lead to lower risks for cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer across populations internationally, without asking consumers to change their diets individually.

Key findings from “Toward an Emerging Public Health Paradigm: Agriculture and Food Production for Health” include:

• Comparative risk modeling projects that commodity wheat breeding that increases fiber content will lead to reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer.
• Actual disease reduction will be dependent on numerous factors, including dietary choices made by individuals and patterns observed at population scale. Wheat with increased fiber could generate peak U.S. health care savings of approximately $12B per year.
• Increased-fiber wheat could prevent medical conditions for 6 million Americans and save more than 60,000 lives annually.

“We are thrilled to be a part of this amazing collaboration of 53 scientists working to accelerate the process of identifying the best method to enhance the health of food, without relying on
individuals to change their eating habits,” said Rod Wallace, founding president of the Coalition for Grain Fiber, a coalition of the Foundation for Innovation in Healthy Food.

The paper, “Toward an Emerging Public Health Paradigm: Agriculture and Food Production for Health,” is a collaboration between academics and leaders from the foundation. It has been published as a perspective article in the MDPI journal Foods and outlines scientific rationale and policy pathways for large-scale adoption of nutrition-enhancing food systems.

The Foundation for Innovation in Healthy Food works to build communities focused on improving the nutritional value of everyday foods in order to prevent chronic disease, while preserving the joy of consuming food. FIHF is a charitable foundation that promotes making staple foods healthier and freely shares its ideas without benefiting financially from the publication of the article or the ideas expressed within it.