Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Tier 4 — Narrative / commentaryPeer-reviewed

Food systems boundaries are currently poorly defined

Paul Behrens, Joseph Poore

Nature Food · 2025

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Summary

Behrens and Poore examine the currently fragmented approaches to defining food system boundaries across research, policy, and practice contexts. As suggested by the title, the paper identifies that these boundaries lack standardised or coherent definition, which may impede comparison and integration of findings across the food systems literature. This work appears to offer a critical methodological contribution to clarifying how food system scope should be operationalised.

UK applicability

The findings are likely relevant to UK food policy and research design, particularly for efforts to develop integrated food strategies and assess farm-to-fork environmental or health impacts consistently across studies and interventions.

Key measures

Definitional frameworks for food system boundaries; methodological approaches to boundary-setting in food systems research

Outcomes reported

The paper examines how food system boundaries are currently conceptualised and measured across research and policy contexts. It likely identifies inconsistencies or gaps in how these boundaries are defined.

Theme
Measurement & metrics
Subject
Measurement methods & nutrient profiling
Study type
Commentary
Study design
Narrative review
Source type
Peer-reviewed study
Status
Published
Geography
Global
System type
Food supply chain
DOI
10.1038/s43016-025-01263-3
Catalogue ID
BFmommpjz9-0gizkl

Topic tags

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