Upcycled Food Association (UFA) is a nonprofit trade association focused on reducing food waste by growing the upcycled food economy. The mission of the UFA is to champion upcycling as one of the most critical solutions to mitigate the climate crisis and advocate for the best interests of the upcycled food industry.
They envision a global food system where all food is elevated to its highest and best use. UFA is leveraging market forces to prevent food waste by coordinating hundreds of companies around the world and empowering millions of consumers to prevent climate change with the products they buy.
UFA has four main objectives: 1 Attracting more support for the upcycled industry 2 Connecting the upcycled business network 3 Improving the upcycled supply chain 4 Increasing consumer demand for upcycled products
UFA has 3 impact areas:
Research Fellowships – Upcycled Food Foundation research fellowships are dedicated to supporting evidence-based industry progress and educating consumers about the environmental and social benefits of upcycled foods.
Policy & Advocacy – We work to elevate and amplify the upcycled food industry by urging policymakers to support progressive policy and programs. Learn about our policy priorities, where we are advocating, and how we mobilize and represent UFA members.
Food Waste Funder Circle – Helping to fund the fight against food waste, the Food Waste Funder Circle is a network designed for private, public, and philanthropic funders interested in using their capital to solve food waste challenges.
Springmann, M., Freund, F. Options for reforming agricultural subsidies from health, climate, and economic perspectives. Nat Commun 13, 82 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27645-2
Agricultural subsidies are an important factor for influencing food production and therefore part of a food system that is seen as neither healthy nor sustainable. Here we analyse options for reforming agricultural subsidies in line with health and climate-change objectives on one side, and economic objectives on the other.
Using an integrated modelling framework including economic, environmental, and health assessments, we find that on a global scale several reform options could lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in population health without reductions in economic welfare. Those include a repurposing of up to half of agricultural subsidies to support the production of foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics, including fruits, vegetables, and other horticultural products, and combining such repurposing with a more equal distribution of subsidy payments globally.
The findings suggest that reforming agricultural subsidy schemes based on health and climate-change objectives can be economically feasible and contribute to transitions towards healthy and sustainable food systems.
The Center for Biological Diversity released an analysis of the dietary guidelines of the G20 countries that found the United States has fallen behind in including sustainability. The analysis found that most G20 nations include sustainability goals and recommendations to reduce meat and/or increase plant-based foods. But the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, also known as the DGA, does not consider dietary impacts on the environment or recommend reduced meat consumption, though animal agriculture is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity loss.
While G20 nations have taken the lead, fewer than half of national dietary guidelines around the world include environmental sustainability. But that number has been rapidly growing over the past 10 years, with an increase in recommendations to reduce meat consumption and an emphasis on plant-based diets. Aligning dietary guidelines with sustainability goals is particularly important in G20 countries, where the current per capita consumption of meat and dairy is higher than the global average.
FOODPathS is a project funded by the European Commission (EC) that aims to offer a concrete pathway and necessary tools for establishing an appropriate operational environment for the future European Partnership for Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) for People, Planet & Climate, to be launched in 2024. The SFS Partnership aims for the transformation of national, EU and global food systems, making them safe, sustainable, healthy, resilient and trusted – for everyone and within planetary boundaries. It will bring policymakers, businesses, researchers and civil society to coordinate, align and leverage European and national efforts to future-proof food systems through an integrated and transdisciplinary approach.
Foodtech Living Labs Platform – This serves as a central hub of collaboration and innovation for Europe’s foodtech sector. It comes as a result of the mapping and reviewing of living labs across Europe, identifying successful models that can be scaled and adapted elsewhere. It is designed to connect national and regional Food Systems Living Labs from across Europe, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, insights, and successful practices. Visit the site to use an Interactive Map to explore living labs across Europe.
Network of Universities – This network of university-driven local food ecosystems motivates institutions, staff, and students to foster Food 2030-inspired food system transitions. FOODPathS is: Mapping European universities and research centres that can act as Sustainable Food System actors in this new-to-build network and review food systems education and lifelong learning programs. Contributing to improved Food System education and training programs by helping to fill skills and knowledge gaps. Writing a food systems sustainability charter to foster improved Food System education and training programs across Member States. Organising activities such as demo events, hackathons co-organised with young professional networks, visualisations of success stories of SFS education and Living Labs, food festivals for education, student competitions, and opportunities to link incubators and public school programs.
Map of funders – Their network spans multiple European countries to co-develop and deliver best practices, solutions, and synergies with the greatest potential for impact. They listen to and work with partners across the food system continuum, who share their commitment of achieving a future with a resilient, flexible food system that is safe, affordable, and nutritious.
Partnership Inclusivity – FOODPathS is committed to including all the farm-to-fork voices in building an inclusive and transparent SSFS Partnership.
If you are interested in keeping up to date on progress you can:
Join the Sustainable Food System Network that brings together actors across the food system (around the globe) to break silos and offer opportunities for dialogue.
Follow on LinkedIn for news on food & health EU-research projects funded by Horizon Europe Research & Innovation Programmes. Managed by EUFIC.
A senior UCD academic from the SPHPSS has contributed to Airfield’s Education and Research Committee since 2020.
The collaboration has enabled student training and research relevant to sustainable food systems through BSc human nutrition undergraduate work placements, and MSc dietetics and PhD nutritional science projects for over seven years. It has allowed Airfield Estate to establish itself as a research body on both national and international stages.
UCD gains access to the public and use of the farm, gardens, restaurant, and demonstration kitchen for practice-based training of students and research studies.
Airfield Estate gains access to academic processes and research project supervision.
This UCD-Airfield Estate collaboration provides a mutually beneficial, relatively low-cost structure to create research, train students and access the public.
Background:
Airfield Estate is a 38-acre working farm and gardens located in the suburbs of Dublin, Ireland. Open every day to the public, its aim is to become Dublin’s Sustainable Food Hub in a world-leading, sustainable food city. Run as an organic and regenerative farm, the Estate completes the farm-to-fork story with a restaurant and farmers market supplied by the farm and gardens. As an organisation that has 230,000 visitors a year, and which has both an educational and research remit, it offers an opportunity for its local University, UCD, to collaborate on a range of projects. UCD, a public research university with over 38,000 students, is Ireland’s largest university.
Collaborations between Airfield Estate and UCD range from undergraduate professional work experience (9 months) to postgraduate masters and PhD projects. The Estate also facilitates UCD conferences and summer school visits that focus on the practical application of sustainable food systems as well as consumer behaviour change.
UCD students and supervisors work in partnership with the education and research department of Airfield Estate to create research projects from hypothesis to dissemination. Critical to this is the facilitation of ethical approval for these projects through the University. The participation of a high level UCD academic on the Education and Research Committee at Airfield Estate is also important as it supports Airfield Estate positioning itself for academic grant applications and ensuring that the Estate engages in relevant research.
The success of the collaborative approach between UCD and Airfield Estate is based on offering academic staff and students a whole system understanding and approach to food systems as well as access to and working with both food production experts and consumers. The research conducted by students on the Estate is consumer-centered and intervention-driven creating a testbed for programmes with potential to be scaled to national and international levels. Airfield Estate has email and social media access to a large public cohort offering an invaluable reservoir for conducting surveys, creating focus groups and accessing audiences for research dissemination events. UCD provides academic supervision of all placements and projects ensuring that they are ethically and rigorously conducted.
Lessons Learnt
1) The symbiosis of academic and non-academic education and research partners creates novel opportunities for education and research.
Having a non-academic partner with a focus on educating the public, advocating for sustainable food systems and a large database of customers, members, and followers on social media offers the academic partner a unique opportunity for education and research into consumer behaviour and consumers’ relationships with food. The facilities and proximity to the academic partner (3 km) allow for easy access for student placements and supervision, summer school educational visits, conference outings, and lectures. The provision of restaurant meals with food supplied by the farm and gardens demonstrates the practical application of a food systems approach.
UCD has been critical to the establishment of Airfield’s education and research department, contributing ethical review and approval for all research projects undertaken, the students to undertake the projects, and academic supervision. This ensures an ethical and rigorous process that protects vulnerable population groups is in place as well as facilitating the submission of high-quality research findings to national and international conferences and for peer-reviewed publication. The students and researchers from UCD working with Airfield Estate also provide an opportunity for the Estate to measure the impact of internally driven projects and programmes which is critical to future grant funding applications.
2) The non-academic partner must have a structure capable of planning and managing research.
Airfield Estate’s strategy contains several pillars, one of which is ‘Powerful Research’. As such, it has developed an Education and Research Committee with both external and internal stakeholders that meets quarterly and has created its own 5-year research strategy. The Board, Trustees and Senior management of the Estate are all supportive of the research conducted at the Estate and a model of both internal research (supported by 9-month work placements by BSc human nutrition students and an in-house research officer) and international research (European Union Horizon projects) has developed.
3) Selection of topics for research must be relevant and robust for both parties.
So as not to waste time and limited resources, as a self-funded non-academic body, Airfield Estate needs to plan and strategically and critically evaluate research that is relevant to its remit and to its potential to submit successful future grant applications. Hence, the decision-making process on what research projects are undertaken must be robust and meet the needs of both the non-academic and academic partners. The research data and end user of the intervention must also be clearly identified in advance, utilize the expertise of academic staff and must fulfil students’ academic programme requirements.
Food for Thought • How can a non-academic partner contact a university (and vice versa) to begin a conversation on collaborating? Is there a structure within your organization or university for this? • Memorandums of understanding are important to define the aims, relationships, and resources needed for the partnership. • Piloting small interventions through local non-academic partners brings research to life for the public, enriches the offering and grant potential of the organization, and provides a high-quality and engaging learning experience for students.
Contact Information:
Prof Clare Corish, Professor of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, University College Dublin, clare.corish@ucd.ie
This project developed a handbook with 60 hours of ready-to-use coursework on implementing the Planetary Health Diet and educational formats on transformative action and sustainability in training dietitians in Germany.
This project was funded by The German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU) and run by KLUG e.V. (German Association on Climate Change and Health), VDD e.V. (German Association of Dietitians), and the School of Dietitians at the University Hospital Münster.
Lessons Learnt: Topics of sustainable and healthy diets and transformative education can be implemented as a singular course or integrated throughout the training of dietitians.
Background:
Nutrition, health, and the environment are closely linked and mutually dependent. In Germany, common dietary patterns and the associated food production pose a significant risk to the health of the population and the climate and health of our planet. The Planetary Health Diet developed by EAT-Lancet provides crucial starting points for a healthy diet within planetary boundaries.
However, the scientifically based, holistic concept is still insufficiently applied in the nutrition and health sectors and is missing in dietetic education curricula. The potential of such a diet, not only in the fight against planetary crises but also for improving population health, is still little known and is not used strategically.
Figure 3: Implementation of the PHD in the teaching kitchen; own picture
The project aimed to develop educational formats on the Planetary Health Diet and transformative action for training professionals in the nutrition and healthcare sector. The model and implementation were tested in a dietetics class.
After a successful trial of the model week on “Planetary Health and the Nutrition of the Future” with students from the School for Dietitians at the University Hospital Münster, the content was evaluated, revised, prepared and passed on to teachers at other dietitian schools in a train-the-trainer seminar with the purpose of scaling.
All materials are available to all schools via the VDD member area or the project lead of KLUG e.V.. Based on these elaborated materials and the evaluation, the design and implementation of a multi-part training course for already working dietitians and nutritionists (across associations) follows. In addition, an adaptation of the materials to the training of physiotherapists and occupational therapists is in preparation.
Food for Thought Besides an increase in knowledge, students experienced an increase in drive, confidence, and assumption of responsibility towards fighting the climate crisis.
Muñoz-Martínez, J., Cussó-Parcerisas, I., Carrillo-Álvarez, E. Exploring the barriers and facilitators for following a sustainable diet: A holistic and contextual scoping review. Sustainable Production and Consumption (2024). 46, 476-490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2024.03.002 (pay wall)
Relevant to:
Dietitians, nutritionists, and public health professionals aiming to promote a shift towards sustainable and healthy diets.
Question:
Identifying the barriers and facilitators people experience when following a sustainable and healthy diet.
Bottom line for nutrition practice:
This research recognises the intricate net of factors that influence individuals to adopt a sustainable and healthy diet. Such influences vary significantly in magnitude and direction among different individuals. The complexity surrounding food decisions demands that interventions and actions targeting food behaviour are tailored to the characteristics and needs of the target population.
Abstract:
Changing current dietary patterns to more sustainable ones is paramount to decrease the pressure food systems are putting onto the planet and people’s health and wellbeing. However, modifying consumers’ behaviour is extremely challenging since multiple factors of variable nature (i.e., personal, socioeconomic, cultural, external…) influence food choices.
For this reason, we aim to identify consumers’ barriers and facilitators for following a sustainable and healthy diet, and explore how these are perceived among people from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
To do so, we conducted a scoping review of the literature with a consultation phase with citizens from Barcelona with different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Results revealed one hundred intricate factors that influence people’s food behaviour, which were grouped into internal, and external factors. Although the literature generally agreed on the direction of influence from the identified factors, the consultation phase generated substantial disagreements given the participants’ diverse perspectives and motivations. However, some limiting factors were commonly mentioned across groups which corresponded to feelings of distrust towards the food industry, lack of time, disgust towards specific foods, and the high cost of foods. Differences across socioeconomic groups were not observed except for the latter. All participants agreed that cost acted as a barrier, although participants from higher socioeconomic backgrounds were more capable to find arguments to overcome the price barrier.
Results are necessary to acknowledge the particularities embedded in each person and the need to design context-based interventions to effectively overcome people’s barriers and enhance their facilitators.
Details of results:
The scoping review revealed 100 intricate factors influencing consumers in following a sustainable and healthy diet.
The consultation phase allowed to identify the nuances surrounding the findings from the literature review.
Significant differences across socioeconomic groups were not observed except for how cost was considered as a barrier. For individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds, the high cost of food is a decisive factor for not purchasing sustainable food, whereas for those from high socioeconomic backgrounds, the cost barrier can be dissipated by factors linked with knowledge and consciousness.
Additional commonly identified decisive limiting factors were the distrust towards the food industry, lack of time, and disgust towards specific foods.
Newly recognised determining factors included knowledge of ethical aspects of food production, trust in small producers and food sellers, emotional involvement with producers, food addiction, lack of interest, selfishness, the belief that legumes put on weight, being a time-oriented individual, access to culture, food safety, social media, and perceived lack of time.
Of additional interest:
The results from the literature review barely covered the socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of sustainable diets. Although efforts were made to address this limitation by purposely covering this dimension during the consultation phase, future research should take these aspects into account to address sustainable diets in their broadest understanding.
TABLE’s mission: ingredients for better dialogue. TABLE is a food systems platform that sets out the evidence, assumptions and values that people bring to debates about resilient and sustainable food futures. They explore the data, the biases and the beliefs behind those debates in order to support better dialogue, decision making and action.
TABLE is for everyone with an interest in food. Acting as an interface between the worlds of research and practice, our work reflects and interrogates real and relevant food system debates. We are in constant dialogue with people working within the food system, including civil society, policy makers, advocates and practitioners.
TABLE puts together many resources such as explainers, blog posts, podcasts, letterbox series, other publications in their resource library, and a list of events and job opportunities. They have a page in Spanish as well. TABLE es MESA en América Latina.
A useful resource for busy people is their summary series which break down some of their explainers into a brief format. Short summaries are now available for the following explainers:
What is regenerative agriculture?
What is ecomodernism?
What is feed food competition?
What is the land sparing-land sharing continuum?
What is agroecology?
What is food sovereignty?
Soy: food, feed and land use change
Rewilding and its implications for agriculture
Agricultural methane
What is malnutrition?
What is the nutrition transition?
What is ultra-processed food? And why do people disagree about its utility as a concept?
CASCADES’ vision is a pan-Canadian health system that supports a healthy planet, is caring and equitable, and serves communities so that they thrive. Their work supports the Canadian healthcare community in making this vision a reality. CASCADES strengthens the capacity of the healthcare community across Canada to transition towards, high-quality, low-carbon, sustainable and climate-resilient care through:
Resources to fill the implementation gap. We leverage community expertise to build robust implementation resources.
Training to strengthen the capacity for change. We deliver training through a range of courses and events.
Collaboration to foster pan-Canadian coordination. We work with interested parties across the country with a view to pan-Canadian exchange and coordination.
Across Canada, teams are testing and refining evidence-informed change ideas. CASCADES work alongside these innovators to equip and empower a broader community of early adopters. CASCADES also work with partners across Canada to embed validated change ideas within health system guidance, policy, regulation, and institutional structures.
They work with and learn from many other organizations and individuals across the country. CASCADES is funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada and is an initiative of four founding partners: the University of Toronto Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health & Sustainable Care, the Healthy Populations Institute at Dalhousie University, the Planetary Healthcare Lab at the University of British Columbia, and the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care. In Quebec, CASCADES is a partner in the Réseau d’action pour la santé durable du Québec.
Key collaborations:
The Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL)and CASCADES are partnering to offer health leaders in Canada a new avenue to leverage, build knowledge, skills and networks across Canada’s healthcare community to promote and deliver sustainable health systems.
Through the Health Leadership Specialty in Sustainable Health Systems, Canadian health leaders will undertake the FREE Fundamentals of Sustainable Health Systems course and one of the advanced courses. Participants will apply their learning in their workplace and write a paper on the impact and experience of knowledge translation. The paper is reviewed by a panel of three CCHL Fellowship Evaluators, who may award the Health Leadership Specialty in Sustainable Health Systems.
HealthcareLCA constitutes the first global living database of healthcare-related environmental impact assessments. The HealthcareLCA database is designed to support the transition to sustainable, low-carbon health systems, providing an open-access, interactive, and up-to-date evidence resource for healthcare workers, sustainability researchers, and policymakers. The collaboration between CASCADES and HealthcareLCA aims at supporting regular updates of the database and its availability as an open access resource.
This unit will catalyze research, education, and practice change in clinical care, health system management, health policy, and public health to meet the transformative challenges posed by climate change and the demands of sustainability.
Pillars of Activity
Education – explore options for supporting health professions and graduate health sciences education.
Research – assess research needs, identify opportunities for catalyzing research and connecting with trainees from across UofT, and develop a network and directory of members.
Practice Change – serves as the Secretariat for the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN) Sustainable Health System Community of Practice. It will explore opportunities to strengthen the Sustainable Health System Community of Practice and build links to other Communities of Practice.
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