Global Roots (website)

Global Roots promotes regenerative, equitable, and nutritious plant-based food systems by modeling agricultural conservation projects, partnering with organizations around the world to implement whole systems change, and providing on-the-ground education programs. They are based in the USA* and the Dominican Republic** in partnership with the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and are exploring other expansion areas. By recognizing the overlap between nutrition for personal and planetary health, we can drastically improve global health standards while simultaneously reducing agricultural land use requirements paving the way for increased conservation.

Objectives:

  • Expand the practice of agriculture as a form of conservation, life-enhancement, and regeneration to areas around the world.
  • Provide education opportunities on how to transition consolidated, top-down food systems to community-owned land trusts and regenerative land practices.
  • Demonstrate through model programs how transitioning inefficiently used farmland from speculative markets to locally-owned land initiatives increases healthy food options, employment opportunities, and resilient communities of health.
  • Increase peer-to-peer networking and coalition building through the Whole-Communities platform.
  • Provide technical support to promote regenerative, equitable, and nutritious plant-based food systems.

* The Brightside Farm and Nursery in the USA is the home of Global Roots. The farm is located outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina in growing zone 8a and covers an area of 2.5 acres hosting the nursery, mixed vegetable production, and orchard. Operations of the farm and nursery are governed by the Global Roots staff and board of directors.

** The RAICES Institute education center is located in the Dominican Republic in the province of Las Hermanas Mirabal, north of Salcedo in the village of La Cumbre. The center is owned and operated by RAICES Global with program support from Global Roots and the T. Colin Campbell center for Nutrition Studies. The center hosts education programs and aims to establish plant-based communal food hubs.

2025 January

Justice on the Menu: Legal & Policy Strategies to Address Structural Discrimination in the US Food System (2024 Oct)

ChangeLab Solutions. Justice on the Menu: Legal & Policy Strategies to Address Structural Discrimination in the US Food System. 2024. https://www.changelabsolutions.org/product/justice-menu

Food is a basic human necessity, and access to nutritious food is essential to people’s health and well-being. However, racial injustice and oppression embedded in the US food system cause economic, environmental, and health harms for many Americans — from farmers, producers, and distributors to restaurant workers, food retailers, and consumers.

The ideas and guidance in this resource aim to foster new conversations, advocacy efforts, partnerships, and research to advance racial justice in our food system. To aid changemakers who wish to center racial equity in food systems research, policy, and action, Justice on the Menu offers the following information and tools:

  • Introduction & Key Concepts: Background information on the history of racism across many dimensions of US food systems, resulting in land loss for BIPOC communities; low pay and poor working conditions for farm and food workers; and unjust racial and ethnic disparities in rates of hunger, food insecurity, and diet-related diseases
  • Policy Menus: state and local policy options that can be implemented to advance health and racial justice through the food system
  • Community Spotlights: stories describing how communities are putting policies into action
  • Practical & Legal Considerations: notes for changemakers working at the powerful nexus of food justice, health justice, and racial justice, to inform their community partnerships and help them navigate various legal landscapes

The report can be downloaded in full or in individual sections or fact sheets to meet specific needs.

“No single policy pursued in isolation can dismantle structural racism or make transformational change in the food system. Changemakers who use this resource should consider individual policy options as “bricks in a brick wall” — meaning that over time, and when connected to broader social justice movements, they can be part of the pathway toward more transformational change.

Deliberate, racism-conscious legal and policy interventions can help to codify and institutionalize ideas and values that emerge from these movements to drive long-term food justice and racial justice. Legal and policy strategies can address the distribution of money, power, opportunities, and resources and undo fundamental drivers of inequity, including structural discrimination, which is the preeminent driver of inequity.

Efforts to address historical and ongoing harms and advance food justice, health justice, and racial justice would be incomplete without law and policy changes.”

Center for Ecoliteracy

The Center for Ecoliteracy in California, USA, advances the teaching and modeling of sustainable practices in K–12 schools. We build partnerships and the capacity of K–12 schools to support healthy, sustainable school communities and food systems change in schools. The Center for Ecoliteracy leads systems change initiatives, publishes original books and resources, facilitates conferences and professional development, and provides strategic consulting. We work at multiple levels of scale, with local, regional, state, and national programs.

Our California Food for California Kids® initiative builds the capacity of public school districts to provide students with fresh, locally-grown food and reinforce connections between the classroom, cafeteria, and garden. With a network of over 100 public school districts across the state, California Food for California Kids advances practical solutions that transform school food systems and how students learn about the food they eat.

In 2021, the Center for Ecoliteracy successfully advocated for California to become the first state to adopt universal school meals as a co-sponsor of the Free School Meals for All Act and a core member of the School Meals for All coalition. We are proud to be part of California’s leadership in transforming school food and recognizing the important role of school nutrition professionals.

Determining Health: Food systems issue brief (2024)

This issue brief explores the connections between food systems and human health and well-being in the Canadian context, as part of the Determining Health series of the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. It is also available in French. This issue brief is intended for public health practitioners, decision-makers, researchers, and students looking to learn about the public health relevance of (industrial) food systems and the urgent need for their transformation.

The resource is divided into four sections:

  • Section 1 introduces food systems and their major components, defining food systems as the “webs of activities, people, institutions and processes that bring food from the fields, forests and waters to our plates, and beyond”.
  • Section 2 explains why food systems matter for public health policy and practice. It describes their importance for meeting populations’ nutritional needs and highlights key issues with Canada’s industrial food systems, the dominant type of food system in the country.
  • Section 3 draws on peer-reviewed and grey literature from 42 sources to explain five pathways linking industrial food systems to health inequities.
  • Section 4 concludes the document and underscores that all public health practitioners and organizations have a role in helping build healthier, more sustainable and just food systems.  

Use this resource to

  • Build understanding of food systems and their major components
  • Facilitate discussion on how industrial food systems contribute to health inequities in the Canadian context
  • Support food system-related public health interventions

Link is infected? CASCADES (Creating a Sustainable Canadian Health System in a Climate Crisis)

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.

Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health & Sustainable Care Organization (2023)

The Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health & Sustainable Care is a multi-faculty academic unit at the University of Toronto. Launched in November 2023, the Collaborative Centre is an initiative of four faculties: the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, and the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, with an administrative home for Temerty Medicine in the Department of Family and Community Medicine.

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.

Position on the Importance of Including Environmental Sustainability in Dietary Guidance (SNEB, 2019)

Rose, D., Heller, M. C., & Roberto, C. A. (2019). Position of the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior: The Importance of Including Environmental Sustainability in Dietary Guidance. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 51(1), 3-15.e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2018.07.006

Abstract:

It is the position of the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior that environmental sustainability should be inherent in dietary guidance, whether working with individuals or groups about their dietary choices or in setting national dietary guidance. Improving the nutritional health of a population is a long-term goal that requires ensuring the long-term sustainability of the food system.

Current environmental trends, including those related to climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, water shortages, and water pollution, threaten long-term food security and are caused in part by current diets and agricultural practices. Addressing these problems while producing more food for a growing population will require changes to current food systems.

Dietary choices have a significant role in contributing to environmental impacts, which could be lessened by consuming fewer overconsumed animal products and more plant-based foods while reducing excess energy intake and the amount of food wasted. Discussion of sustainability within governmental dietary guidance is common in many countries, is consistent with previous US guidelines, and is within the scope of authorizing legislation. Dietary choices are a personal matter, but many American consumers are motivated by a concern for the environment and would welcome sound advice from credentialed nutrition professionals.

More opportunities are needed for developing such interdisciplinary knowledge among nutritionists.

About the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior (SNEB)

The Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior (SNEB) represents the unique professional interests of nutrition educators worldwide. SNEB is dedicated to promoting effective nutrition education and healthy behavior through research, policy, and practice and has a vision of healthy communities, food systems, and behaviors. SNEB is an international community of professionals actively involved in nutrition education and health promotion. Their work takes place in colleges, universities and schools, government agencies, cooperative extension, communications and public relations firms, the food industry, voluntary and service organizations, and with other reliable places of nutrition and health education information.

  • SNEB Vision: People worldwide empowered by food and nutrition education to change behavior, food systems, and policy.
  • SNEB Mission: The Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior advances food and nutrition education research, practice, and policy that promote equity and support public and planetary health.

SNEB has an External Funding Policy based on its vision and mission there they strive to secure contributions from a variety of donors and provide opportunities for sharing diverse perspectives. In addition, SNEB and SNEBF will actively seek contributions from donors that are aligned with our mission.

SNEB has a Division of Sustainable Food Systems (DSFS) whose mission is to promote food systems that are environmentally sound, socially just, economically viable and produce quality food. The division supports leadership in advocacy, education and research through communications and networking among division members and with individuals and organizations in the public at large. Become a member via SNEB and/or connect with DSFS on Facebook.

SNEB’s Healthy Meeting Guidelines were adopted by members in September 2014. To the extent that funding and staff resources are available and the item is logistically feasible, SNEB incorporates these guidelines into its meetings. SNEB’s goal is to fulfil at least 80% of the guidelines for each meeting. General Recommendations are are follows, for the full guidance use the link.

  1. Support healthier choices, provide leadership and role modeling, and help to create a social norm around
    healthier choices and behaviors.
  2. Place healthier foods and beverages in prominent positions, where they are most likely to be seen and more
    likely to be chosen.
  3. Offer nutritious food and beverage options.
  4. Provide reasonable portions of foods and beverages (i.e., avoid large portions).
  5. Ensure healthier options are attractively presented, appealing, and taste good.
  6. If appropriate/possible, post calories at conferences and meetings.
  7. Offer physical activity opportunities that are relevant to the audience and environment to help people achieve
    at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day.
  8. Prioritize sustainable practices when possible, by minimizing waste, encouraging recycling, and sourcing
    products from sustainable producers.
  9. Evaluate efforts to hold healthy meetings and conferences and make adjustments over time to continue to
    improve the acceptability and healthfulness of choices.

Sustainability by the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group (Website)

The Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group (VN DPG) is the leading authority on evidence-based plant-based nutrition for the public and health professionals who wish to learn more about the benefits of plant-based diets for health and sustainability.

VN DPG professionals are at the forefront of educating the public about vegetarian nutrition and its relationship to disease management and prevention. The VN DPG comprises about 1,400 members. The membership comprises a significant number of Americans, Canadians and overseas members from Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. VN DPG members work as consultants, clinical dietitians, researchers and in other job settings.

Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets: “Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage.”

Partial substitutions of animal with plant protein foods in Canadian diets have synergies and trade-offs among nutrition, health and climate outcomes (2024 Feb)

Auclair, O., Eustachio Colombo, P., Milner, J. et al. Partial substitutions of animal with plant protein foods in Canadian diets have synergies and trade-offs among nutrition, health and climate outcomes. Nat Food (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00925-y (Paywall)

The study was published in Nature Food in February 2024 and was conducted by researchers at McGill University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. It analyzed the impacts of partially replacing red and processed meat or dairy with plant protein foods in Canadian diets on nutrition, health and climate outcomes.

Key findings include:

  • Replacing 50% of red and processed meat with plant proteins could reduce diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25% and increase life expectancy by up to 8.7 months
  • Replacing 50% of dairy with plant proteins had smaller benefits, reducing emissions by only 5% and increasing life expectancy by 7.6 months
  • Replacing dairy increased calcium inadequacy by up to 14%

Abstract

Dietary guidelines emphasize the consumption of plant protein foods, but the implications of replacing animal with plant sources on a combination of diet sustainability dimensions are unknown.

Using a combination of data from a national nutrition survey, greenhouse gas emissions from dataFIELD and relative risks from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017, we assess the impact of partially substituting red and processed meat or dairy with plant protein foods in Canadian self-selected diets on nutrition, health and climate outcomes.

The study provides evidence that partially substituting animal with plant proteins, especially red meat, can have synergistic benefits for human and planetary health in Canada.

The substitutions induced minor changes to the percentage of the population below requirements for nutrients of concern, but increased calcium inadequacy by up to 14% when dairy was replaced. Replacing red and processed meat or dairy increased life expectancy by up to 8.7 months or 7.6 months, respectively. Diet-related greenhouse gas emissions decreased by up to 25% for red and processed meat and by up to 5% for dairy replacements.

Co-benefits of partially substituting red and processed meat with plant protein foods among nutrition, health and climate outcomes are relevant for reshaping consumer food choices in addressing human and planetary health.

Teaching nutrition and sustainable food systems: justification and an applied approach (2023 Sep)

Four pillar method of analysis. Prompts to consider when evaluating characteristics of a food product using the sustainable, resilient, healthy food and water system framework.

Campbell, C., & Feldpausch, J. (2023). Teaching nutrition and sustainable food systems: justification and an applied approach. Frontiers in Nutrition. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1167180.

Systems thinking is an essential skill for solving real-world problems, supporting lasting, impactful change, and creating desired futures. Transdisciplinary teaching and learning should be integrated into higher education to ensure students have the knowledge and skills to prosper in an ever-changing world. Education that addresses the interconnectedness of food systems is fundamental in cultivating future generations equipped to mitigate complex problems, such as hunger, nutrition-related chronic disease, and the climate crisis.

Connecting the food, agriculture, and nutrition sectors is vitally important for improving human and planetary health and well-being. While we continue to acknowledge that it is critically important to teach systems thinking in the context of sustainable food systems limited resources are available to facilitate this type of learning. Historically, a “triple-bottom-line” approach focusing on economic, environmental, and social perspectives has been used to define sustainability. In contrast, including nutrition and health may provide a more robust view and even greater consideration for the system in its entirety.

The sustainable, resilient, healthy food and water system framework, addressing all four pillars, can be used in higher education to help evaluate the sustainability of food and compare methods of production, place, and dietary patterns. This paper justifies the need for addressing sustainability issues in the context of nutrition and provides an educational approach to support student understanding and application of a systems thinking approach.

In addition to the resources cited in the descriptions of the four pillars; the Food Systems Dashboard, Our World in Data, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest may be beneficial references to consider for multiple pillars.

Note: Even though the article is written from the perspective of and with examples from the USA, the teaching approach could easily use other examples from any region of the world.