Fig. 1: The Nutritional Desert Index was calculated as the ratio of GDP per capita to the distance from each country to its nearest major broccoli-exporting country.

Values are summarized as regional means with standard errors. The red dashed line indicates a threshold, calculated as the maximum mean index among Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America & the Caribbean—regions considered most vulnerable to nutritional insecurity. North America was excluded from the analysis due to a small sample size (n = 2). Asia–High Income includes Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and Israel, classified as high-income economies by the World Bank. EU denotes for the European Union. Data were accessed through the World Bank (supplementary data Table 1). The threshold 4.65 is the mean index for Latin America and the Caribbean, plus 3.09 standard errors for the mean.