The 2015 USDA’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, has published a report that sets out its revised dietary recommendations to encourage Americans to eat more healthily, and this time the recommendations also take account of environmental sustainability considerations. The report, Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Advisory Report) will be reviewed by the Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Federal government will determine how it will use the information in the Advisory Report as the government develops the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015 to be released later this year.

This new series of papers from the Lancet summarises the latest available knowledge on obesity and what can be done to address the problem. The series introduction describes how today’s food environments exploits people’s biological, psychological, social, and economic vulnerabilities, making it easier for them to eat unhealthy foods. This in turn reinforces preferences and demands for foods of poor nutritional quality, furthering the unhealthy food environments. The authors call for regulatory actions from governments and increased efforts from industry and civil society to break these vicious cycles.

Video recordings of the talks from the City Food Symposium of December 2014, hosted by City University London, are now available online. You will find downloadable files of the speakers’ presentations on the City University London website.

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change has published a report based on their newly developed Global Calculator tool.

This article from Nasdaq describes what they call a “shocking” reduction in meat consumption and how this may impact the meat industry and other sectors. The potential catalyst they argue is the release of preliminary recommendations from the committee of medical and nutrition experts involved in developing USDA dietary guidelines.

This paper presents two ways of including environmental and nutritional aspects in the sustainability assessment of diets. Three diets were assessed using these two methods: a diet issued from the National Food Agency as a recommended diet reflecting food preferences in Sweden (SNÖ), a diet corresponding to current average food consumption in Sweden according to the latest food intake survey (Riksmaten) and a Low Carbohydrate-High Fat (LCHF) diet, which is a popular life-style diet in Sweden currently.

In this blog, Eating Better’s Sue Dibb writes of her disappointment that the long awaited Communication on Sustainable Food from the European Commission remains unpublished, amid reports of political and industry lobbying to bury it. Read the full blog post here. You can also read more about sustainable healthy diets and food policy on our website.

Although there is no absolute consensus on the recommendation for total fat and dietary fat and saturated fat (SFA) intake between governing bodies and health organizations, there is a general sense of convergence. All guidelines currently suggest that total fat should not exceed 35% of daily calories. Although most guidelines propose a target for dietary SFA, there is no consensus on the value to aim for.

BBSRC - Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has released a report on sustainable intensification (SI) together with an invitation for interested parties to comment. Responses received will be taken into account in addressing the group’s recommendations.