This paper outlines the concept of values-based food systems a term based around a common commitment to environmental sustainability and social justice. The paper examines the development of four multi-stakeholder local food partnerships in Birmingham, Bristol, Rotherham and Sheffield. 

This paper uses data on the real life (as opposed to modelled) dietary practices of vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters to compare environmental impacts across all major environmental measures. The paper links one of the largest datasets available on the true dietary practice of different self-identified dietary groups (vegan, vegetarian, meat eater etc.), with data on the environmental impact of 589 foods across ten environmental measures from 570 life-cycle assessments.  

This report from the Centre for Food Policy at City University of London discusses the role middle-chain actors, particularly food manufacturers and retailers, play in influencing farmer and consumer behaviours and how this leads to negative environmental impacts. The findings presented in this report highlight the importance of policy approaches that promote mutual responsibility across the entire supply chain to achieve sustainable production and consumption.

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 maps the location and cumulative magnitude of the environmental pressures (greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use, habitat disturbance and nutrient pollution) caused by both aquatic and land-based food production across the globe.

This paper reviews 43 existing studies on the environmental sustainability and nutritional characteristics of plant-based animal alternatives (PB-APAs) compared to animal products. PB-APAs, such as Beyond Meat and Oatly milk, are foods which seek to mimic animal products. They do not include minimally processed plant-based foods such as legumes and nuts.

This paper estimates the environmental impacts (across four impact categories) of over 57,000 food products (found in the UK and Ireland) composed of multiple ingredients, filling a knowledge gap since previous analyses (such as Poore and Nemecek) compare only single foods. It also examines the relationship between the environmental impacts and nutritional characteristics of the products, concluding that more nutritious products are often (but not always) more sustainable as well. The study is co-authored by several members of Oxford’s Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) programme.

This paper, co-authored by TABLE community member Hayo van der Werf, discusses which environmental issues, data, methods, formats and so on should be used in the environmental labelling of food in France. The motivation for the paper was to consider how the French government’s recent requirements to introduce environmental food labelling can provide relevant information that is feasible to gather.

This book discusses how food systems models can be used to understand both the impacts of agriculture and food across multiple dimensions of sustainability and the ability of the food system to provide nutrition despite global environmental change.