An initial impact of the continuing rise of carbon dioxide levels means that cultivated crops, food, are becoming less nutritious. Immediately, this could lead to greater levels of malnutrition. From the journal PLOS Medicine, the article outlines how public health initiatives should be a second effort, with the primary effort being a reduction in emissions levels to combat global increases in malnutrition. While researchers have seen the plants do grow to larger sizes, the overall nutritional concentration of minerals of iron and zinc are decreased. Decreased dietary levels of zinc have results in childhood cases of malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea to increase. Extrapolating these nutritional deficiencies in crops and their impact on health have resulted in researchers estimating that an entire year of healthy life could be shaved off the average individual by the year 2050. Developing nations have and will continue to be disproportionately impacted by this decrease in food nutritional content.

Efforts to mitigate the impacts of decrease nutritional foods have resulted in varied strategies, including directly reducing emissions for the sake of food quality, and wholesale distribution of mineral supplements to replace what is missing in the average diet. Preventing a great impact on the individual person is a lack of knowing what exactly the average person in different regions of the world eat on a daily basis. For example, China has seen a huge change in the average diet over the past several decades from the rise in readily available animal products. Dr. Samuel Myers, senior research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health stated, "It's the wealthy people in the world who are emitting lots of carbon dioxide, wealthy consumption patterns are putting the poorest, most vulnerable people in harm's way."