This paper sets out 26 research priorities related to improving food environments, nutrition and health in Africa, based on the first Africa Food Environment Research Network Meeting. The research priorities focus broadly on understanding the key drivers of food consumption and acquisition, and on interventions and policies to improve food environments.

This policy briefing produced by the EU Food Policy Coalition provides an evidence-driven review of how food environments - i.e. the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural context in which people make decisions about consuming food - shape food demand. It argues that food environments are key to transforming the food system, by making healthy, sustainable foods the options that are the most available, accessible, affordable, enjoyable and widely promoted.

This editorial in the Nature Food journal discusses the role that technology can and should play in reforming the food system. It argues that while technologies such as cultured meat, precision agriculture, drones and artificial intelligence are expected to contribute to sustainable food security in the future, technology often creates unexpected impacts that are hard to predict and that must be mitigated. Furthermore, it says, ethics and traditional knowledge systems are key to transforming the food system.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food held the Salzburg Process on the Climate Emergency and the Future of Food in May 2020. In this blog post, Ruth Richardson (Executive Director of the Global Alliance) reflects on lessons learned from holding the event virtually because of COVID-19, rather than physically as originally planned.

In this paper, FCRN members Pip Brock and Daniel Tan examine how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as a tool for informing resource-use decisions. They contend that two different schools of thought - natural resource management and planning theory - would benefit by learning from each other.

This report sets out the results of the European Union-funded REFRESH Project: Resource Efficient Food and dRink for the Entire Supply cHain. The project aimed to reduce food waste in the EU by developing an evidence base on consumer and business behaviour, assessing the environmental benefits of avoiding food waste, and designing technology to add value to food waste streams.

This paper addresses the concept of co-production of actionable knowledge - where researchers and decision makers interact iteratively to produce knowledge that can be acted on, instead of a one-way flow of information from researchers to decision makers - in relation to research on environmental sustainability. 

This report by the Environmental Investigation Agency and NGO Greenpeace studies how UK supermarkets have taken action on plastic packaging. It finds that overall plastic packaging used by UK supermarkets has risen by 2% between 2017 and 2018, mainly driven by sales of branded products. Waitrose and Morrisons have made the most progress in reducing plastic packaging.

This paper analysed thousands of items of children’s clothing and found that many feature images of food - particularly on girls’ clothing - and that those images often depict unhealthy food types.