Impacts of meteorological changes on nutrition-related cardiometabolic disease

About This Grant

The essential fatty acids (EFAs) linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid play an important role in the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases, which include heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Humans cannot synthesize EFAs so they must obtain them from the diet, but up to one-third of US adults do not meet daily recommended intakes. Soybean oil is the main source of EFAs in the US, but the EFA concentration of soybeans is reduced when exposed to varying daytime temperatures during critical growth phases. With a central role in human nutrition, the decrease in EFA content of soybean oil could have profound implications on the burden of cardiometabolic diseases in the US, but this has not been evaluated. To address this need, our innovative approach will use a public-private-academic partnership to secure soybean samples from top-producing states, which will be analyzed for EFA content, geolocated, and matched with meteorological data. We will use these data to build a series of computational models to understand how varying daytime temperatures may impact soybean EFA concentration, human EFA intake, and cardiometabolic health in the US, with predictions to the year 2060. To inform potential intervention strategies, we will also evaluate whether advancements in agricultural technologies and implementation of clinical and public health interventions can offset the expected burden of EFA-related cardiometabolic diseases.