🔆 Sustainability Spotlights

🇮🇳 India – Seema Puri

Dr Seema Puri, PhD is one of our SFS Toolkit Advisors with over 40 years of teaching and research experience. Her interests are in infant and young child nutrition, childhood obesity and the food environment, non-communicable diseases, and geriatric nutrition.

She integrates sustainability into her work, as you can see in the special issue of JHND (scroll up in this newsletter for the link). She co-authored an article on “Environmental imprints of agricultural and livestock produce: A scoping review from South Asian countries”.

She has guided the research of over 55 postgraduate and 17 doctoral students and has undertaken many research projects. She has presented at many conferences and meetings and has been awarded several fellowships and awards. Recently, she was felicitated with the Rajammal P Devadas Award 2020 by the Nutrition Society of India for her outstanding contribution to applied nutrition. She was recently awarded the Nutrition Leadership Excellence Award by NIFTEM and the Ministry of Food Processing in 2022.

She has published extensively and has over 110 publications and nearly 2900 citations. Publications to her credit include a popular “Textbook of Nutrition and Dietetics” and edited books on “Diet and Ageing” and “Children in India: Opportunities and Challenges”. She has been a short-term consultant for many international organizations and is actively involved with national and regional policies, programmes, and networks.

She was the National Vice President of the Indian Dietetic Association, Executive Council member of Nutrition Society of India, and India’s Representative on the Asian Federation of Dietetic Associations. She is presently the India representative on the International Federation of Home Economics.

Seems that a diverse career has provided great opportunities to integrate Sustainability in a wide variety of avenues!

🇹🇼 Taiwan – Ariel Ho

Ariel Ho has been one of the contributors to the #ICDAsfsToolkit since the early days and a SFS Toolkit Advisors. If you click through on her links, you’ll find Ariel’s website and social media which include writing about the importance of sustainable eating. She is currently a Berkeley Taiwan Biomedical visiting scholar in the USA at UC Berkeley, running a diet/ nutrition/ medical device/ digital health development project.  

And that is why we are highlighting her today:  She was just accepted into Berkeley’s SkyDeck and Health Tech CoLab Start-up Accelerator Programs. Congratulations!  Ariel says, “It’s such a huge encouragement for me to be promoting sustainable eating in this way. It’s my pleasure that I can share the knowledge of sustainable eating with Berkeley students.”

The product that Ariel has developed with her team is called Diaita. The mission is to make a lifestyle change with people who are potential to get illness. Providing a tailored and easy way to approach, help them get healthier. The Vision is that we truly believe that our app solves the problem of climate change, malnutrition, and chronic disease. Mostly, bring better to not only our generation but also next generation.

Read more about her award and the Diatia team at Berkely’s GLOBE Centerreturn to top

🇨🇱 Chile –  Paola Bernardita Cáceres Rodríguez

Paola is a nutritionist serving as the subdirector of the School of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Chile, a highly regarded public institution.  She is also one of our SFS Toolkit Advisors.

Paola believes that as nutritionists we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to enhance our understanding of sustainable food systems in order to make a positive impact on our communities.

Over the past seven years, Paola has been dedicated to integrating sustainability competencies as a hallmark of our profession. She is committed to preparing future nutrition graduates with the knowledge, attitudes, and values needed to promote sustainability and develop sustainable food systems.

With her extensive experience, Paola aims to contribute to the development of standards for undergraduate training in nutrition, enabling graduates to acquire the necessary skills to work in sustainable food systems without requiring further graduate or postgraduate education. Thanks to efforts by her and her colleagues, this vision is beginning to take shape in Chile.

Paola has worked on assessing food waste in households (the first national report on this topic), developing indicators for food transformation through culinary techniques, creating sustainable menus, and integrating culinary practices with migrant communities—all while emphasizing the environmental and social aspects of sustainability.

Additionally, she has conducted research focused on teaching sustainability in student training programs.

🇨🇴 Colombia – Christine McCullum-Gomez 

Christine is based in Bogota, Colombia.  She is a consultant, speaker, and writer with areas of expertise in community-based participatory research, community food security, environmental nutrition, population-based approaches to nutrition and health, and sustainable food systems. She serves as a column editor for the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition (JHEN) and is a member of the JHEN Editorial Review Board. 
  
Dr. McCullum-Gomez completed a PhD in Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University with minors in Public Affairs and Program Evaluation. She received M.S. and B.S. degrees from the Pennsylvania State University. She has received numerous awards, including a National Cancer Institute Post-doctoral Fellowship. 
  
Her website is “Sustainable RDN: Sustainable Eating for a Healthy Planet” and can be read at: 👉 http://www.SustainableRDN.com. The site provides authoritative information on healthy eating and how to shape the food supply in a manner that is environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. She offers consulting services, scientific expertise, and products for policy makers, city and regional planners, farmers, the food industry, academia, the media, registered dietitians/registered dietitian nutritionists (RDs/RDNs), and the general public. See her recent presentation titled 👉“Food-Based Strategies to Promote Personal and Planetary Health: The Role of Nutrition and Dietetics Practitioners”.
 
Via her blog at: 👉www.sustainable-rdn.com she offers summaries of the latest science related to various aspects of sustainability.  Christine is active on social media, sharing the latest information on sustainable living, agroecology, and regenerative agriculture.  

🇲🇽 Mexico – Eduardo Alberto Gómez Infante

Gómez-Infante is a renowned nutritionist and professor at the State University of Sonora in Mexico and one of our SFS Toolkit Advisors.

He is currently dedicated to promoting food and nutrition education as well as the sustainability of food systems.  His research focuses on contributing alongside multidisciplinary teams to align dietary practices with sustainable food methods, advocating for food systems that reduce environmental impact and improve public health. This includes encouraging the consumption of locally sourced foods and diets based on fresh foods, which are generally more sustainable than highly processed “alternative meat” products.

Gómez-Infante is actively involved in educational programs aimed at equipping both human nutrition students and health professionals with sustainable practices. He conducts workshops and courses that emphasize the integration of sustainability into dietary recommendations and public health policies.

He collaborates with a range of organisations and institutions focused on sustainability in food systems, lending his expertise to initiatives aimed at reducing food waste, promoting biodiversity, and improving food security. His influence extends to the development of policies related to nutrition and sustainability. Through evidence-based recommendations, he seeks to shape policies that support sustainable food practices and healthier food environments.

Currently, he leads a multidisciplinary research entitled “Sustainable Nutrition in University Students: The Case of the State University of Sonora.” This study evaluates the dietary behaviors of Mexican students at the State University of Sonora (UES) in relation to planetary sustainability. UES is a public university in northwestern Mexico with five campuses spread across the state. The research focuses on students at the Academic Unit of Hermosillo (UAH), particularly those pursuing degrees in nutrition and environmental studies.

The survey instrument is based on the previous work of Márquez et al. (2014), which validated a questionnaire to assess dietary behaviors among Mexican university students in the health area. While this serves as a fundamental tool, Professor Gómez-Infante’s research introduces novel elements and variables that are put into practice from the perspective of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations 2030 Agenda on: Quality Education, Sustainable Cities and Communities, and Responsible Consumption and Production.

Through these initiatives, Professor Gómez-Infante continues, within his area of ​​expertise, to make significant progress in integrating sustainability into food science, fostering a healthier future for both people and the planet.

🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago – Jessica Carmella John 

Jessica is a Caribbean-based Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Consultant from Trinidad and Tobago and one of our SFS Toolkit Advisors. Her career focus is on public health initiatives surrounding food insecurity, sustainable food systems and nutrition, emergency preparedness, and systemic disaster and crisis management. 

Jessica was a participant in the 2023-2024 cohort of the EU-funded PAHO/UWI Climate Change and Health Leaders fellowship, a 12-month training program focused on creating inter-sectorial, multidisciplinary Caribbean nationals with the skills to improve climate and health systems in the region. Her requisite national project and symposium are centered on climate change and nutrition.

In her capacity as Nutrition Consultant/Food Security Specialist, Jessica presently functions in the area of Programme and Policy.  She is the current President of the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Nutritionists and Dietitians.

In 2024/25, she was awarded an NDA Sustainability Grant to develop and run an introduction to Sustainability for Nutrition Professionals, which will result in a draft SFS position paper for the Association to review, refine, and endorse if there is agreement

🇩🇪 Germany – Elina Zwickert

Elina is living and working in Kiel, Germany, located directly at the baltic sea, in a city full of marine related institutions, companies, culinary and cultural opportunities, the protection and sustainability of marine and coastal habitats has always been one of my interests – and what it means in terms of a healthy and balanced diet for people. She is a past member of the SFS Toolkit Advisors.

As a registered dietitian and graduate in paramedical teacher education, Elina has worked for more than one and a half decades, especially in the field of training and teaching dietitians. Subsequently, she expanded her field of education and lecturing throughout the training of various health care professions.

In this multidisciplinary context, Elina continuously integrates and distributes the importance of nutrition for a healthy well being in prevention and therapy – for us and the environment.

🇬🇷 Greece – Despina Varaklas

Despina combines nutrition, nature, and psychology to go beyond diagnosing a patient just by a disease. She feels that the more inclusive the image we have about the patient, the better we can treat them because the better we understand them, their wishes, and their capabilities.  

She developed her views early in life as she was volunteering as a teenager in her hometown hospital, which continued for many years. She found it very interesting to observe the staff’s different approaches and the effect they had on the patients, positive and negative. Later, when she was training to become a clinical dietitian, she knew she couldn’t accomplish her work without taking the emotional state of the patient as part of the assessment. Hence, acquiring a second degree in psychology. 

Over time, she created the “WWYP Approach”, meaning “Work With Yourself Work With Your Patient” Approach.  Its aim is better patient-centered care, or simply put, better healthcare. More than 5,000 people, the majority of whom are in healthcare, have been introduced to this approach. Of those who participated in her workshops, almost 82% claim that they see a difference in their relationship with their patients, while more than 33% of them ask for further training in this approach.

In 2021, she launched her YouTube channel “Straight from Nature“, a video library on nature’s products, a way of contributing to sustainability and a sustainable food system. She received a grant from the ICDA SFS committee to support the expansion of the channel’s reach and impact.

Interested in learning more?  Despina’s contact information is on her website.

🇪🇸🇪🇺 Spain/EFAD – Manuel Moñino

Manuel is a Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist and member of the executive committee of the European Federation of Dietetic Associations (EFAD) representing the General Council of Dietitians-Nutritionists of Spain.  He has been leading the European Specialist Dietetic Network in Public Health for the last 6 years and has several roles, including being involved in the EFAD Sustainability in Dietetics, the EFAD Position Paper: Sustainable Dietary Patterns (2021), and a member of the SFS Toolkit Advisors.

He is a senior consultant in public health for the Spanish Association Fruit and Vegetables “5 a day” of the Global Alliance for the Promotion of F&V Consumption (AIAM5) and the Spanish Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. One of AIAM5’s aims is to “Promote and value the biodiversity, sustainable systems, environmentally friendly for production and distribution.”

Manuel is the author of scientific and dissemination articles in the field of community nutrition and a speaker and presenter of numerous posters and communications at national and international congresses. A recent example from 2022 is his presentation on “Dietitian as a key professional to facilitate transition towards sustainable food systems” at the 1st International Conference of Nutritional Sciences and Dietetics, 27-29 May 2022, Thessaloniki, Greece.

🇸🇪 Sweden – Jenny Isenborg Sultan

Jenny Isenborg Sultan is a food service dietitian working as a meal developer in the Trosa municipality. Jenny has 14 years of experience working with public meals in both Sweden and Norway.

In her career, the work with sustainable meals has always been present, at first in the work of increasing the amount of organic purchases in the role as head chef and later working in Södertälje and Trosa municipality with the implementation of the Diet for a Green Planet concept found at: www.DietForAGreenPlanet.se

The concept’s five criteria: According to Diet for a Green Planet, the food should be
1 – tasty and healthy,
2 – organically produced,
3 – consist of less animal products and more vegetables, legumes, and whole grains,
4 – locally produced in season and
5 – marked by reduced waste.

The site has projects listed since 2011 that you can gain inspiration and lessons from, as well as videos and tools for practice and training courses.

🇨🇭Switzerland – Sylvie Borloz

Sylvie has been a contributor to and user of the SFS Toolkit since the early days.  She has a master’s in Health Sciences with an emphasis in Nutrition and Dietetics and has more than 20 years of clinical experience in paediatric nutrition.

Her particular focus is in the field of childhood obesity, where she has studied the importance of ultra-processed foods. She is active in national and international charity work. She feels that food sustainability is an obvious way to leave a sustainable world for all children. She is also part of the SFS Toolkit Advisory Team.

🇬🇧 UK – Ali Morpeth

Ali is a Registered Public Health Nutritionist (RNutr) in England and is on a mission to drive food systems transformation through healthy sustainable diets 🌱.   

She says that the way we eat and the way food is produced is driving interrelated crises to public health, climate, and nature.  Ali knows that this is not inevitable – and that healthy, sustainable diets are an opportunity to drive the changes we need – but getting started and leveling up is complex.

💚 Ali has 15+ years of experience working across sectors to deliver change goals. She is trusted by 20+ international and UK organisations.  She works with responsible businesses, policymakers, and NGOs to solve food-related public health & climate crisis.  She aims to supercharge impact by embedding knowledge, policies, and strategies in the right place.

🌍” We have all the tools we need to solve the food-related public health & climate crisis, but we’re not deploying them fast enough,” says Ali. Everything she does is based on coupling her deep expertise in nutritional science with an entrepreneurial approach. 

🌟 Ali was Awarded ‘Sustainability Nutritionist of the Year’ from Nutrition Graduates, UK.

✨If you are mission-aligned, contact her to find out how you can work together 🙏

Contact Ali via her website:  https://alimorpeth.com/

🇬🇧 UK – Clare Pettinger 

Dr. Clare Pettinger is an award-winning Registered Dietitian (HCPC) and Registered Public Health Nutritionist (AfN) and works as an Associate Professor at the University of Plymouth in England, UK. She believes that radical creative approaches are required to tackle current food system, health, and social well-being challenges. Clare is one of our SFS Toolkit Advisors.

🌍 In 2022, she presented “How dietitians can protect the planet” for the Elsie Widdowson Memorial Lecture, which is organised and supported by the British Dietetics Association. Each year since 2001, one senior member of the profession, at the pinnacle of their career, is invited to deliver a lecture on a topic of their choice. I highly recommend listening to this!

🫱🏽‍🫲🏻 Clare is actively engaged in collaborative community research around food systems, poverty, and social justice. She is the Principal Investigator of the Plymouth work package for a 5-year national consortium project led by the University of Reading (Chief Investigator Prof Carol Wagstaff) titled: ‘FoodSEqual: Co-production of healthy, sustainable food systems for disadvantaged communities’. It is a £6 million project funded by the UK Research and Innovations (UKRI) Strategic Priorities fund and focuses on co-production with the communities they are working with. See her recently co-created toolkit on ‘co-production of research for food systems transformation’.

🔵 Clare is an enthusiastic ‘sustainability champion’ involved in promoting leadership for sustainability and environmentally sustainable diets for nutrition professionals nationally and internationally. Locally, she worked with the British Dietetic Association to co-produce the One Blue Dot campaign & she is an active member of Greener Allied Health Professional hub and sustainability curriculum guidance steering groups.

💪 She frequently acts as an advocate for her profession, offering expert consultancy and advice on healthy, sustainable eating and food-related issues to the media and local/regional networks. Actively involved in local and regional food partnerships (see Food Plymouth and Food Power).

🎶 And if you’d really like to get to know Clare, you’ll be interested in her title of #TheSingingDietitian, which focuses on critical food-themed songs – which she describes as ‘quirky’!

🇬🇧 UK – Marta Buczkowska 

Marta graduated from Newcastle University with a master’s degree in Dietetics focusing on calculating the carbon footprint of packaging of paediatric oral nutritional supplements. Starting in October she will begin postgraduate studies in ESG (Environmental Social Governance) Management at Collegium Da Vinci 🌍.

🌱 Marta is a committee member and social media officer in the British Dietetic Association (BDA) Sustainable Diets Group. She is responsible for co-creating public relations campaigns & social media content (@bda_sustainablediets) aiming at raising awareness about sustainability, healthy eating, and the planetary diet. She also analyses current trends and monitors engagement.

🍏 Marta has experience in a medical catering company providing meals to the National Health System (NHA) hospitals. Her work focused on market research & analysis and creating a sustainability strategy based on the NHS Net Zero Strategy. She collaborated with the marketing department on promotional materials and modified recipes to align with the principles of plant-based diets.

📸 She also runs her own Instagram or LinkedIn channels (@PlateForThePlanet), where she shares knowledge on plant-based diets, nutrition trends, and scientific research in dietetics. Sustainability, veganism and climate change have all become ‘hot topics’ recently – meaning there is more and more fake news emerging around these issues. The purpose of her account is to share evidence-based knowledge about plant-based nutrition, sustainable diets & food systems in a ‘digestible’ and practical manner!  You will find information about food-related greenhouse gas emissions, food waste, the latest news regarding sustainable eating or plant-based diets, and practical tips & tricks on how to include more plants in your everyday eating! 🥦🍉

💪🏼 Additionally, she is a sustainable nutrition expert in a video training project at Newcastle University and co-created an eight-module course on the basics of dietetics and healthy eating for an educational app. 

Marta is looking for new opportunities within the EU related to: 
🔬 Research and development of new products
💻 Managing and growing social media
🌍 Co-creating sustainability strategies
📚 Organizing events, webinars, and campaigns
🗞️ Creating educational materials
… and is also open to other opportunities! 🚀

If you are looking for someone passionate and committed in the areas of nutrition, health & sustainability, with social media experience, feel free to contact her at #PlateForThePlanet on Instagram or LinkedIn. 

🇬🇧 UK – Tanya Haffner

Tanya Haffner, RD, MBDA is an Irish-born, UK-trained dietitian specialising in public health nutrition communications. During her almost 30-year career, she has advised and supported organisations, stakeholders, and the public to eat well for their health and the health of the planet.  
 
Her interest in sustainable, nutritious diets and fixing our broken food system started from a young age.  At 15 she won ‘The Cook of All Ireland’ competition by cooking healthy, tasty dishes. She found a passion for food, health, and the environment at a time when it was a largely unspoken topic. Studying nutrition and dietetics gave her the platform to help the public eat well for health and the planet.  
 
Tanya is the founder and CEO of Nutrilicious, which is a specialised consultancy and marketing agency, supporting organisations and brands in building their credentials and communications on nutrition and sustainability.
 
She also founded MyNutriWeb, a nutrition learning hub for professionals and change agents in healthcare and food provision, awarded the best nutrition resource of the year in 2021 and 2022 by Complete Nutrition publications and Nutrition Graduates.
 
Tanya was one of the originators of the British Dietetic Association’s (BDA’s) One Blue Dot report and toolkit on sustainable diets and is leading a new strategy with the BDA Sustainable Diets specialist group to help unleash Dietetic Professionals’ impact on sustainable eating.  She was a media spokesperson for the BDA for over 20 years and sat on several expert committees over the years, as well as speaking at and chairing many events.  
 
Tanya received a Roll of Honour from the BDA for her leadership and contributions to sustainable diets.  She also received the Caroline Walker Trust Award for Best Freelance Nutritionist of the Year in 2021 and the Outstanding Achiever Award from the British Dietetic Association in 2022 for founding MyNutriWeb and Nutrilicious and her impact on public health.

🇨🇦 Canada – Roxane Wagner

Roxane is a Registered Dietitian in Canada and a past member of the SFS Toolkit Advisors. She became interested in the topic of sustainability at a young age, growing up on an 800-acre farm where her family raised livestock, mixed grains, and vegetables. Her mother taught her the art of self-sufficiency in preserving the bounty.

Her journey in the field of sustainability is diverse, from working for a multi-national company, gaining experience in operations and marketing, to co-owning a hotel/restaurant on an island in Honduras where water and energy are limited and local sourcing for food and building supplies are the only financial and logistical options.

She is the founder of Sage Sustainable Solutions Consulting, which supports organizations, businesses, communities, health practitioners, and individuals with strategies and guidance in meeting their sustainability goals. Sage ran the Sustainable Stories Podcast, which highlights a wide range of individuals in a variety of sectors who share their journey in incorporating sustainability in their lives and work. The goal is for listeners to feel inspired by these stories and feel empowered to make changes, big and small, in their lives and work.

Roxane has had lots of practice implementing sustainability in her life and adapting and learning based on the environment around her. As she incorporates sustainability, she has learned:

• There are many ways to approach sustainability. Start by leaning into your strengths, and don’t feel you need to wait to be perfect – take action, big or small, it all makes a difference.
• It’s important to get comfortable with change, and when faced with polarizing views, try to find common ground.
• Sustainability can be a complex topic, and a collaborative approach can make it feel less overwhelming.

The Sustainable Stories podcast can be found on the Sage website and is available on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

🇺🇸 USA – Marie Spiker

Dr. Marie Spiker, PhD, MSPH, RDN is an Assistant Professor with the University of Washington School of Public Health. She is an assistant professor and core faculty in the Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health Program and the Department of Epidemiology, and an adjunct assistant professor with the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences.

Marie has been part of the ICDA SFS Toolkit advisory team since its inception and was one of the speakers for the NDA SFS Position learning sessions. She previously served as a Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems Fellow with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation, where she led strategic initiatives to grow the capacity of nutrition and dietetics professionals to cultivate sustainable, resilient, and healthy food and water systems (source).

UW explains that Dr. Marie Spiker approaches public health nutrition research through a food systems lens that recognizes the need for transdisciplinary and multisectoral collaboration. What would it look like for us to equitably nourish a growing global population? More importantly, how do we get there – which inputs have more leverage within complex systems, and what evidence do decision-makers need in order to support public health?

Dr. Spiker’s research interests include public health nutrition, sustainable food systems, food loss and waste, value chains for nutrition, systems modeling of food supply chains, and capacity building within nutrition and public health. To explore these topics, she draws from training in quantitative and qualitative methods and systems science, as well as her training as a registered dietitian nutritionist. Her professional practice experience includes work with municipal food policy and capacity building within the profession of nutrition and dietetics.

Visit the links to explore her work – it is very impressive and worth emulating!

🇺🇸 USA – Mary Purdy

Mary Purdy, MS, RDN is an integrative eco-dietitian and nutrition educator with a Master’s Degree from Bastyr University, where she is currently adjunct faculty. She has been in clinical practice for 13+ years using a personalized medicine and functional nutrition approach. She teaches and lectures for numerous universities, institutions, and professional educational platforms and presents regularly at national and state conferences on both nutrition and sustainability.

She serves as the nutrition and sustainability adviser for Big Bold Health, hosts the podcasts “The Nutrition Show” and “The Good Clean Nutrition Podcast,” and has authored the books “Serving the Broccoli Gods” and “The Microbiome Diet Reset.” She is a speaker, consultant, and community builder working with organizations to create a more sustainable, just, and resilient food system.

Mary has amassed a myriad of scientific papers on a variety of topics on her website related to the impacts of our current industrial food and agricultural system and the effects it is having on human and planetary health. She has summaries on several topics.

Mary is active on many Social Media channels – click through on her link above and connect with her!

🇦🇺 Austrailia – Kathy Faulkner

Kathy is a Food service dietitian with a keen interest in promoting healthy, equitable, and sustainable food systems. She has over 15 years of experience as a food service dietitian and has worked across multiple healthcare settings for both the public and private sectors. She started a PhD in 2020 after the Victorian Government announced its intention to promote local food on hospital menus. Her PhD topic explores this issue from a practical perspective, investigating the current situation and exploring models for success. She is part of the SFS Toolkit Advisory Team.

Kathy has a strong interest in the wicked problem of institutional food waste prevention and management and has presented on this topic at several Dietitian Australia conferences and university lectures. Institutional food service is an often forgotten yet significant user of, and contributor to, the greater food system. Institutions are responsible for feeding millions of people year-round. Together, they hold significant buying power and hence offer an untapped potential for the transition towards a more healthy and sustainable food system. Their role as service providers to the greater community uniquely positions them as important leaders in this transition.

🇦🇺Australia – Kristen MacKenzie-Shalders 

Kristen is a dietitian and advocate for planetary health and sustainable food, health, and education systems. She is an experienced health professional, educator, researcher, author, speaker, and facilitator of change with over 20 years of proven success in delivering services and solutions for the education, food, and health sectors. She’s deeply dedicated to advancing environmental sustainability and planetary health through collective action.

Kristen developed a ‘Pathway to Personal, Population and Planetary Health’ in collaboration with advocate dietitians within Australia and the United States of America to empower nutrition and dietetic professionals to make pro-environmental choices in their personal and professional lives. It features 6 guiding principles Agency, Action, Ascension, Alliance and Allyship, Advocacy and Activism, and Alignment. 

Kristen recently founded Steering 3 Billion, a business that aims to harness the combined efforts of the global workforce—over 3 billion strong—to drive societal and environmental progress. They champion collaboration and partner with individuals, groups, businesses, and communities to drive collective action for positive change. They recognise that our global workforce can drive positive societal and environmental change as they hold monetary assets, drive household decisions, steer businesses, and educate and raise our children. 

Kristen provided us with the following tips and learnings that were very useful for me, I hope they inspire you as well:

🐢 When working in the Planetary Health area, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and experience climate anxiety. Kristen recommends several strategies to manage this. Firstly, helplessness breeds inaction, so working with a strength-based lens helps. As well, surrounding herself with people making positive change – and engaging with information that supports a positive future – is important for balance, connectivity, and impact. Finally, nature immersion or nature-based therapy (i.e., being in nature) is important for mental health, connectivity, and the preservation of our ecosystem.

🌏 While Dietitians are well-placed for pro-environmental change and can be (depending on their country and context) a Sustainable Food Systems Dietitian or similar term, ‘sustainability’ as a definition is very poorly understood and applied, and there are different accreditations and qualifications. In the research Kristen and colleagues have undertaken in Australia, they found that ‘Planetary Health’ resonates with dietitians and potentially feels more within a health professional’s remit. Planetary Health is much more than ‘the health of our planet’ – it is a solutions-oriented, trans-disciplinary field and social movement.

🫶🏽 When working in Planetary Health and pro-environmental change, you feel pressure to live an ‘idealist’ sustainable lifestyle, particularly when you know the cost of inaction is high. However, this can be incredibly difficult when the systems and structures do not support these choices. Therefore, being kind to yourself and others as we all leverage transformational change and high-impact strategies is imperative. Not so secretly, Kristen now calls her collaborators ‘co-conspirators’ as they often need to challenge traditional ways of thinking and the status quo.

🇦🇺 Australia – Nathan Cook

Nathan Cook is a PhD student from Monash University, investigating strategies to reduce food waste and divert food waste from landfills in hospital food services. His career ambition is to apply a research approach within hospital food services to reduce hospital food waste.

Nathan is an Accredited Practising Dietitian, Accredited Sports Dietitian, and secretary for the Dietitians Australia food and environment interest group. Nathan is passionate about sustainability and health for people, animals, and the planet, as well as personal and professional development. He also runs a podcast, talking to individuals about their goals, passions, and current projects.

We know that food waste is a large contributor to the global environmental footprint through the emissions created by rotting food in landfills. We also know that some hospitals have reported up to 50% of their total combined waste stream composed of food waste. Food waste in the hospital is complex due to many reasons, including the population (varying appetite, illness, dietary changes), patient’s satisfaction with food (meal quality, portion sizes), and the hospital’s busy environment (meal interruptions, and incorrect forecasting).

This warranted our investigation of methods to accurately measure food and food-related waste in hospital food services. This is an important research question as, to understand the scope of the problem, set food waste reduction goals, monitor progress over time, evaluate the effect of interventions designed to reduce food waste, and compare food waste across sites, requires food waste to be measured. The consensus pathway food waste audit tool we have developed as the outcome of this study will be used in hospital food services to understand and reduce food waste during food preparation, plating, and consumption.

Click here to learn more about Nathan’s study!

🇦🇺 Austrailia – Tracy Hardy

Tracy is a Gamilaroi descendant, an Accredited Nutritionist and Practising Dietitian. Wattleseed Nutrition is a 100% Indigenous Owned and Operated Business based on Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi Country, Sunshine Coast, Australia. Tracy’s work has combined her passion for Native Bushfoods with her knowledge gained during her Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics Degree. With a drive to contribute to positive change and the self-determination, Tracy connects and educates to ignite and inspire audiences to empower aligned action and informed resilience.

Tracy is committed to opening spaces where we can share and deepen our understanding and respect for First Nations Cultures through Traditional Native Bushfoods, Food Ways, and Food Practices. Share in conversation and learn from a Health Professional Perspective in integration with Culturally Responsive Trauma Integrated Healing Approaches and Qualified Beauty Therapy knowledge. All this, interwoven with Sustainability Advice.

“It is here that we can learn to reconnect and heal our relationships with foods and our Mother Earth to re-establish positive meal routines and optimise planetary health and wellbeing.”

Click through for more about Tracy and Wattleseed!

1️⃣ Nutritionists for Sustainability Groups aim to improve peer-to-peer advice and support and to increase access to a range of practical, evidence-based, and context-specific tools and resources to support all Dietitians and Nutritionists to contribute positively to sustainability.
— WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FUADEEbSgHQCusHcVKf4nK
— LinkedIn group:  https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13059833/

2️⃣ Food Systems Transformation WhatsApp Community
The group has several channels

3️⃣ Sustainable Food Systems Network (SFSN) on Mobilize
There are a few subgroups here as well.

4️⃣ Sustainable Foods Network group on LinkedIn

5️⃣ Sustainable Nutrition Manual: Permaculture for Healthy Planet & People, published by World Food Programme. Free manual, flyers, drawings, and poster highlighting 600 foods in Malawi for all the nutrition we need every day of the year. The Permaculture ethics & principles can be used anywhere with your own preferences.
— Manual: https://neverendingfood.org/sustainable-nutrition-manual/
— SNM Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1258368611024344
— SNM WhatsApp group:  https://chat.whatsapp.com/FMfkSsmrvUlDh6Cytt10UK