Climate change won’t just bring rising sea levels and more extreme weather — it could also impact your dinner plate.
Climate change won’t just bring rising sea levels and more extreme weather — it could also impact your dinner plate.
A new University of Toronto study suggests that a warmer world will decrease the availability of a nutrient that is key to development and brain health. The study, published in the journal Ambio, investigates worldwide production of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a naturally occurring essential omega-3 fatty acid. The group of molecules is needed for higher-level brain functioning and cognition, memory, eyesight, particularly at crucial stages in fetal brain development.
Most humans get their DHA from eating fish, which in turn get it from the algae that they eat. But Tim Rodgers, a PhD candidate in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, says that as ocean temperatures rise, the need for algae to produce DHA decreases.
“To counteract the effect of higher temperatures, which can make their cell membranes too fluid, algae typically produce fewer polyunsaturated fats (such as DHA) in a process known as homeoviscous adaptation,” says Rodgers (left), who is a first co-author of the study along with Stefanie Colombo of Dalhousie University.
“Algae is the bedrock of aquatic food chains, so this decrease in DHA production works its way right up to the fish we eat, which make up a significant source of the long chain omega-3 fatty acids in the global diet.”
Continue reading at University of Toronto.
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