Nutrition and Climate Change
Ernæring og Klimaforandringer
By Linda Løwebeck
Humanitarian nutritionist
Copenhagen, Denmark.
Written Spring of 2025
Food security and nutrition security in an age of climate change.
Analysing the nexus between nutritional security and climate change.
Suggestions to end world hunger.
Nutrition comes from nature.
Nature is climate.
Climate is nutrition.
How do we access proper nutrition if the climate is messed up?
How can we adapt our food sustainability and nutritional security?
Climate change such as floods, drought, winds, temperature change, rising sea levels etc.
There will be climate displacements, crop modifications, prevention from climate effects, risk of malnutrition and undernutrition etc.
What kind of food will be assumably easy accessible in the future?
Dietary future forecast: Insects.
Nowadays it is a matter of food culture.
Some places in the world would never imagine eating insects where in other parts of the world it is a natural dietary component.
Insects as a food stable could be more prevalent globally in an age of climate change. Insects have to be treated with compassion, so they do not feel stressed, pain or discomfort.
Store them humanely and kill them humanely. Cut their head off and then boil or fry them.
Insects are easy to store, easy to transport, low budget production and low maintenance, they multiply fast and they are nutrient dense with proteins.
It can be roasted, cooked, fried, grinded into flour etc.
Insects are a broad term and have a huge variety. It can be larvae like maggots or locusts / grasshoppers.
Locusts are meaty and it is positive that they multiply into big swarms because a swarm of locusts are like flying sausages that should be utilised as a plentiful food resource for humans and farm animals.
Catch and eat the locusts instead of using pesticides on them.
As an example, a Desert locust weigh 2 gram. A plate of 30 fried locusts is a 60 gram protein meal.
A swarm of 80 million locusts would equate to around 2.6 million plates of protein-food.
It is an untapped resource.
We can have locust farms and other insect farms as well.
Why are we using pesticides on locusts and where are the nets to catch this flying food?
Insect farms would help a lot in fighting world hunger. Insect farms can be set up in all countries so there are always local supply and it increases resilience against world hunger.
With insect farms, everybody should be able to get protein-meals every day.
Seaweed, especially rapid growing seaweed.
Having a home-aquarium with different edible types of seaweed.
Seaweed can also be grown in local seaweed farms in all countries.
It is easy to maintain and it is packed with vitamins, minerals and also fiber.
Seaweed can be prepared in many ways and could become a versatile food stable.
Freshly chopped seaweed, it can be used as a wrap, fried seaweed, blanched, blended seaweed into a paste used as filling or formed into a block and cut in slices etc.
Seaweed should have as little preparation as possible because the nutrient molecules easily breaks down.
For meal composition, seaweed tend to be the flavor type umami and some types of seaweed can be the flavour type bitter.
The flavour type salt depends more on whether it is saltwater seaweed or freshwater seaweed.
(Reference The five flavour types).
Both seaweed and insects are food sources high in macro- and micronutrients.
It can be established as seaweed farms and insect farms all around the world.
As with all food, the less it is prepared, the more it preserves its nutrients.
It could also become more common to grow your own vegetables at home.
Having a little practical home garden inside or outside the home.
Fresh is best.
A meal in the future of climate change could as an example look like this:
Roasted maggots that are crunchy and taste like crispy potato chips, served with freshly chopped seaweed and homegrown tomatoes and a slice of lemon.
Students and people in general can make this dish to expand their awareness and also create variations of this dish.
Due to climate change there will be climatically displaced people and rising sea levels are still in the early stages.
When people think of climate change it is still centered around ecosystems, some animals dying out, heat waves, monsoons etc.
These topics are concerning to the public but not something that the majority of people worry too much about in daily life as of now (2025).
It is in the back of people’s minds.
It is because it does not yet have a direct impact on the majority.
The oceanic situation is terrible regarding waste and temperature change.
To translate the oceanic scenario into an earthy scenario, envision this:
You are taking a nice walk in the forest and then you see that the ground is full of trash scattered as far as you can see.
The forest animals are affected too.
A fox has some plastic around its head and a deer is carrying around a soda bottle stuck on its antler.
There are fewer animals as well because many mating areas have been destroyed by pilled up waste and temperature changes.
It must be highlighted that these climate change are gradually on the rise and will gradually affect our food.
When people begin to understand that climate changes impacts our personal food supply and public food supply, then people will wake up and realize that our food is at risk.
Securing proper health and nutritional security is implicitly vital.
This topic is important because the climate change is going to get worse.
It is a slow onset and will take many decades and centuries and we will gradually adjust.
But it means that we need to be at the forefront regarding nutrition.
Nutrition related to humans and also nutrition related to farm animals.
What will we feed ourselves and what will we feed the farm animals in an age of climate change?
Climate change and climatically displaced people are big tasks to grabble with.
The next task is food.
Food sustainability and nutritional security.
UN sustainable development goals nr 2 and nr 13.
Goal nr 2 is Zero hunger. Waste less food and support local farmers.
Goal nr 13 is Climate action. Act now to stop global warming.
These research reflections explores the nexus between nutrition and climate change with the focus on adaptation.
Climate change forecasts show that it is possible to slow down climate change but unlikely possible to stop it.
By slowing it down we have more time to do nutritional adaptive research with the focus on farsighted nutritional adaptation to climate change.
How do we collaborate with nature in an age of climate change and adapt nutritional security?
This research groundwork will be beneficial for future generations.
This reseach will look into at least the next 100 years to give a workable time horizon about nutrition related to climate change.
In the most dystopian scenario where the climate is messed up, people and farm animals would become climate food refugees and longterm live off what nowadays is emergency food aid.
That could be the norm some generations in the future.
We must comprehend what climate change means to our food supply and that the people classified as climate refugees and climate food refugees will be on the rise.
Let’s find a better path to climate food with sustainable nutritional food sources that are adapted to climate change.
Maybe the future of nutritional reliance does include insects, seaweed and homegrown vegetables.