It challenges the prevailing narrative that increasing production is synonymous with higher emissions and environmental degradation. Instead, it emphasizes the opportunity within agrifood systems to enhance production efficiency while aligning with climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience objectives.
The roadmap identifies 120 actions and key milestones within ten domains, supported by evidence gathered by FAO over several years. These domains include clean energy, crops, fisheries and aquaculture, food loss and waste, forests and wetlands, healthy diets, livestock, soil and water, and data and inclusive policies — the latter two identified as overall systemic enablers.
Concerning food and nutrition, it sets a path to eliminate chronic undernourishment by 2030 and ensure access to healthy diets for all by 2050. Additional milestones include halving per capita global food waste by 2030 and updating Food-based dietary guidelines (FBSG) by countries to provide context-appropriate quantitative recommendations on dietary patterns.
The roadmap also emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between agrifood systems transformation and climate actions, urging the mobilization of climate finance for implementation.
Highlighting a just transition at its core, the roadmap envisions transforming agrifood systems from a net emitter to a carbon sink. It calls for alternative production methods, adjusted consumption patterns, refined forestry management, and innovative technologies such as carbon capture.
Advocating for global resource optimization beyond crop production, the plan suggests rebalancing consumption patterns and promoting healthy diets for all. It stresses that adaptability to specific contexts is crucial, cautioning against one-size-fits-all solutions.
The process, unveiled at the United Nations Climate Conference COP28 as a concrete package of solutions, will undergo extensive fine-tuning and elaboration over the next three years. COP29 will delve into regional adaptation and financial options, while COP30 will outline concrete investment and policy packages at the country level.
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
The 2024 Austrian Dietary guidelines were developed by the Competence Center for Climate and Health of Austria GmbH (GÖG) together with the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) and the Austrian Society for Nutrition (ÖGE). Both health and climate aspects were taken into account.
Visit the link to also download the brochure “Healthy eating, good for the climate” (in German) or it can be accessed or ordered via the brochure service of the Ministry of Social Affairs. The brochure contains healthy and climate-friendly recipes based on the plate model. It was developed by three universities of applied sciences for dietology on behalf of the Ministry of Health.
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?
This issue brief explores the connections between food systems and human health and well-being in the Canadian context, as part of the Determining Healthseries 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
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.
Support healthier choices, provide leadership and role modeling, and help to create a social norm around healthier choices and behaviors.
Place healthier foods and beverages in prominent positions, where they are most likely to be seen and more likely to be chosen.
Offer nutritious food and beverage options.
Provide reasonable portions of foods and beverages (i.e., avoid large portions).
Ensure healthier options are attractively presented, appealing, and taste good.
If appropriate/possible, post calories at conferences and meetings.
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.
Prioritize sustainable practices when possible, by minimizing waste, encouraging recycling, and sourcing products from sustainable producers.
Evaluate efforts to hold healthy meetings and conferences and make adjustments over time to continue to improve the acceptability and healthfulness of choices.
K. Anastasiou, P. Baker, M. Hadjikakou, G.A. Hendrie, M. Lawrence. A conceptual framework for understanding the environmental impacts of ultra-processed foods and implications for sustainable food systems. Journal of Cleaner Production. Volume 368, 2022, 133155, ISSN 0959-6526, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.133155 (paywall).
Relevant to:
Dietitians interested in understanding the environmental impacts of UPFs.
Question:
Research aim: to determine the types of environmental impacts resulting from each stage of UPF production, and the magnitude of these impacts in the context of dietary consumption patterns
Bottom line for nutrition practice:
The findings highlight that environmental degradation associated with UPFs is of significant concern due to the substantial resources used in the production and processing of such products, and also because UPFs are superfluous to basic human needs.
Abstract:
Minimising environmental impacts and prioritising the production of nutritious foods are essential qualities of a sustainable food system. Ultra-processed foods (UFPs) are potentially counterproductive to these objectives.
This review aims to summarise the magnitude and types of environmental impacts resulting from each stage of the UPF supply chain and to develop a conceptual framework to display these impacts. It also aims to identify the terms used to describe UPFs in the sustainability literature, and the methods used to measure the associated environmental impacts.
A narrative review approach with a systematic search strategy was used. Fifty-two studies were included that either described or quantified the environmental impacts of UPFs.
This review found that UPFs are responsible for significant diet-related environmental impacts.
Included studies reported that UPFs accounted for between 17 and 39% of total diet-related energy use, 36–45% of total diet-related biodiversity loss, up to one-third of total diet-related greenhouse gas emissions, land use and food waste and up to one-quarter of total diet-related water-use among adults in a range of high-income countries.
These results varied depending on the scope of the term used to describe UPFs, stages of the lifecycle included in the analyses and country.
Studies also identified that UPF production and consumption has impacts on land degradation, herbicide use, eutrophication and packaging use, although these impacts were not quantified in relation to dietary contribution.
The findings highlight that environmental degradation associated with UPFs is of significant concern due to the substantial resources used in the production and processing of such products, and also because UPFs are superfluous to basic human needs.
The conceptual framework and findings presented can be used to inform food policy and dietary guideline development, as well as provide recommendations for future research.
Details of results:
From a resource-use perspective, UPFs are not a necessary component of diets and therefore environmental impacts are avoidable. Environmental impacts from UPFs occur across the entire supply chain. These impacts range in magnitude, but research on Australian discretionary food consumption indicates that they are significant; approximately one-third of diet-related energy, greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and water use was driven by the production of discretionary foods in Australia.
UPFs reliance on low-cost, high-yield commodities is a driver of diet-related greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, intensive processing technologies is a driver of diet-related energy use and reliance on packaging drives plastic pollution.
Meat-based UPFs appear to be significant drivers of UPF-related greenhouse gas emissions. Plant-based UPFs also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions but their impacts on biodiversity and deforestation are perhaps more concerning.
Of additional interest:
The ways in which foods were classified in the original research articles influenced study findings. This highlights the importance of considering the most relevant food classification system, and the potential impacts of the classification on the findings. Specifically, some outcomes, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land use, appeared to be driven by whether or not studies included processed meats in their ‘unhealthy food’ category.None
Conflict of interest/ Funding:
none
External relevant links:
Ultra-processed foods should be central to global food systems dialogue and action on biodiversity (2022) – The contribution of ultra-processed foods to agrobiodiversity loss is significant, but so far has been overlooked in global food systems summits, biodiversity conventions and climate change conferences. Ultra-processed foods need to be given urgent and high priority in the agendas of such meetings, and policies and action agreed.
Kim Anastasiou, Phillip Baker, Gilly A. Hendrie, Michalis Hadjikakou, Sinead Boylan, Abhishek Chaudhary, Michael Clark, Fabrice A.J. DeClerck, Jessica Fanzo, Anthony Fardet, Fernanda Helena Marrocos Leite, Daniel Mason-D’Croz, Rob Percival, Christian Reynolds, Mark Lawrence. Conceptualising the drivers of ultra-processed food production and consumption and their environmental impacts: A group model-building exercise. Global Food Security, Volume 37, 2023, 100688, ISSN 2211-9124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2023.100688 (paywall)
Relevant to:
Policy makers and dietitians interested in system-wide policy change.
Question:
This study aimed to develop and validate a conceptual model of the known and potential environmental impacts across ultra-processed food (UPF) systems.
Bottom line for nutrition practice:
UPFs are associated with a wide range of environmental harms, driven by a profit-based, corporatized food system and enforced by product design and a food environment structured to encourage UPF consumption. Effectively reducing UPF production and consumption would require a suite of policies acting on the political economy, food environment and production system.
Abstract:
Using group model building we developed a series of causal loop diagrams identifying the environmental impacts of ultra-processed food (UPF) systems, and underlying system drivers, which was subsequently validated against the peer-reviewed literature.
The final conceptual model displays the commercial, biological and social drivers of the UPF system, and the impacts on environmental sub-systems including climate, land, water and waste. It displays complex interactions between various environmental impacts, demonstrating how changes to one component of the system could have flow-on effects on other components. Trade-offs and uncertainties are discussed.
The model has a wide range of applications including informing the design of quantitative analyses, identifying research gaps and potential policy trade-offs resulting from a reduction of ultra-processed food production and consumption.
Details of results:
There are a range of mechanisms by which UPFs harm the environment. Impacts do not occur in isolation and many are cumulative, whereby one type of environmental damage acts to further degrade other forms of environmental damage. Impacts include climate change, land and soil degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity and agrobiodiversity loss, eutrophication, food loss and waste, plastic waste and air pollution.
Drivers of environmental degradation include a political economy system which acts to reinforce profits of UPF corporations, drive corporate political power and ultimately weaken protective food policies. Other drivers include product design, whereby UPFs are designed to be as palatable as possible and a food environment which enables access to inexpensive UPFs around the globe.
Ultimately a shift in production is required to meet the goals of healthy, sustainable and equitable food systems. However, policies which encourage a shift away from UPF production towards unprocessed, minimally processed and processed foods, need to account for trade-offs. Trade-offs relate to production efficiency, time pressures, food loss and waste, land use, cost and convenience (see Table 1).
Of additional interest:
The model highlights research gaps which could be used by future researchers to determine UPF-related research studies. Furthermore, the model can be used to guide researchers on designing quantitative environmental impact assessments, as well as to provide a guide for interpreting quantitative findings in the context of complex and dynamic food systems.
Conflict of interest/ Funding:
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. KA was funded by a Deakin University Postgraduate Research Scholarship.
External relevant links:
Ultra-processed foods should be central to global food systems dialogue and action on biodiversity (2022) – The contribution of ultra-processed foods to agrobiodiversity loss is significant, but so far has been overlooked in global food systems summits, biodiversity conventions and climate change conferences. Ultra-processed foods need to be given urgent and high priority in the agendas of such meetings, and policies and action agreed.
Citation: James-Martin G, Baird DL, Hendrie GA, et al. Environmental sustainability in national food-based dietary guidelines: a global review. Lancet Planet Health 2022; 6: e977–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00246-7
Summary
Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) provide country-specific guidance on what constitutes a healthy diet. With increasing evidence for the synergy between human and planetary health, FBDGs have started to consider the environmental sustainability of food choices. However, the number of countries that discuss environmental sustainability in their guidelines is unknown.
The purpose of this Review was to identify countries with government-endorsed FBDGs that made explicit mention of environmental sustainability and to examine the breadth and depth of the inclusion of sustainability in FBDGs. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN identified 95 countries with FBDGs.
We assessed 83 countries against our inclusion criteria, of which 37 mentioned environmental sustainability. Relevant content was assessed against a set of criteria based on the Food and Agriculture Organization’s guiding principles for sustainable healthy diets.
The depth to which environmental sustainability was discussed varied and it was often restricted to general explanations of what a sustainable diet is. Few FBDGs addressed why sustainability is important, how dietary changes can be made, or provided quantified advice for implementing sustainable diets.
Key messages
Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) are increasingly including content to address the relationship between dietary intake and environmental sustainability. At present, this information is more likely to be reported in background documents than consumer documents, restricting its visibility to users of the consumer documentation.
The principles most commonly addressed in FBDGs are associated with culture, inclusion of animal-based and plant-based foods in the diet, environmental effect, biodiversity, and food waste. However, information is general, and practical, specific advice, or quantified recommendations for action are scarce.
To achieve the transformation to food systems needed to curb the accelerating environmental decline globally, more countries need to commit to developing FBDGs that explicitly emphasise the crucial link between diet and planetary health and provide specific and practical advice to address these issues.
37 countries with environmental sustainability in their FBDG:
Since 2008 the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) has engaged healthcare professionals, patients, and the wider community to understand the connections between health and the environment and reduce healthcare’s resource footprint.
CSH’s work is guided by the principles of sustainable clinical practice:
Prevention
Patient empowerment and self care
Lean systems
Low carbon alternatives
CSH programmes equip healthcare professionals and organisations with methods and metrics for sustainable models of care:
Sustainable Specialties Programme
Carbon Footprinting and Triple Bottom Line Analysis
Education and Training
Sustainability in Quality Improvement*
The Green Team Competition
Green Space for Health
Sustainable Healthcare Peer Networks
* CSH’s Sustainability in Quality Improvement (or SusQI) recognises that there are finite environmental, social and financial resources available to deliver a high standard of patient care. The overall goal of incorporating sustainability into quality improvement is to maximise sustainable value. This means to deliver the best possible health outcomes with minimum financial and environmental costs, while adding positive social value at every opportunity.
CSH was born in and will always have its heart in Oxford, England, but our expanding team of international experts is situated all over the UK, the EU and beyond. CSH has grown into the world’s foremost institution for sustainable healthcare in research and practice and has had a positive impact on so much of the healthcare system in the UK and beyond.
From measuring and reducing our own carbon footprint to prioritising the health, wellbeing, and work/life balance of those in our team, the CSH team practices what they preach every day. In line with our sustainable ethos, we minimise the daily commute by working online. This provides us with the freedom and efficiency to tap into the best and brightest minds in their fields while making a positive impact on the environment in the way we work.
By building its own research base, best practice recommendations and an ever-growing bank of case studies, it has fulfilled its goal of bringing all of that expert knowledge into action, changing clinical care and influencing policy at the highest level.
As CSH goes from strength to strength, so too does its message that healthcare can be sustainable.
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