The Scientific Advisory Board on Agricultural Policy, Food and Consumer Health Protection to the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture has just released an English version of a report on promoting more sustainable food consumption. The report, originally published in 2020 in German, defines policies that integrate consideration of four areas: human health, social aspects, the environment (including climate) and animal welfare. It focuses on designing food environments to support consumers in choosing healthy, sustainable diets.

This report from Compassion in World Farming argues that the traditional selective breeding of livestock has led to great suffering for farmed animals, and that gene editing technologies are likely to exacerbate these welfare issues. It describes how traditional breeding has resulted in chickens that grow so quickly they suffer from leg disorders and heart disease, dairy cows that produce so much milk they experience lameness, mastitis and metabolic disorders, and turkeys that are so large they have joint deformations and cannot mate naturally. The report argues that gene editing should only be used in exceptional circumstances where (a) there is no negative impact on animal health and welfare, (b) no less intrusive methods are available and (c) it does not facilitate industrial livestock systems.

Only an urgent societal transformation can deliver the emissions cuts needed to limit climate warming to 2°C or 1.5°C, according to this report from the United Nations Environment Programme. The report sets out a sector-by-sector examination of how to achieve this transformation.

This paper assesses the impacts of corporate zero-deforestation supply chain commitments (ZDCs) in Brazil. It finds that in the Brazilian Amazon, where the Soy Moratorium ZDC has been both adopted and implemented, the commitment reduced direct deforestation for soy by 57% between 2006 and 2015 in the municipalities that it covered. In the Cerrado, in contrast, none of the seven companies (covering 66% of soy production) that have adopted ZDCs there appear to have fully implemented them - if they had done so, deforestation for soy in the biome could have been reduced by 46% between 2006 and 2015, estimates the paper.

Shifting to the low-meat EAT-Lancet diet across Europe could reduce overall demand for many crops and hence provide resilience against disruptions to food supply, notably those caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to this paper. The shift could also provide environmental co-benefits through increased carbon sequestration and reduced blue water use and greenhouse gas emissions.

This paper, based on Australian dietary survey data, provides support for the “protein leverage hypothesis” - the theory that people’s appetites regulate their protein intake to be within a narrow range, and hence that if protein makes up a lower proportion of the foods they eat, people will end up consuming more calories (in the form of fats and carbohydrates) as a side effect of their appetite for protein. Hence, it argues, protein is key to understanding the high prevalence of obesity. It identifies highly processed foods as one of the food categories that has the strongest “diluting” effect on dietary protein.

The Singapore Food Agency has approved the sale of food products containing Solein®, the microbial protein-rich powder produced by Finnish startup Solar Foods. The production process runs on electricity, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen and small amounts of other nutrients. Solar Foods is also seeking regulatory approval in the United States, the UK and the European Union.

This piece from digital exhibition Apples & People explains the history of the apple in Indian cookery. It also features a short book of Indian apples recipes, which can be downloaded for free.

This memoir by Indian environmental activist Dr Vandana Shiva recounts her advocacy for diversity, indigenous knowledge, localisation, seed saving and food sovereignty.