The Eating Better Alliance has launched a new campaign about eating less meat. The alliance have worked to create a new way of talking about eating less meat, through fun and positive messages and a set of adverts to inspire a new generation of men to be more daring with their food and give vegetarian options a chance. 

Researchers at CGIAR/CCAFS have written a report about different demand side measures aimed at changing food consumption so as to reduce GHG emissions. In particular, they placed their analysis in the context of the Paris climate agreement which aims to limit the increase of global temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change to below 2ºC.

At a time when interest in the sustainability of food is increasing, the need for well-defined, interdisciplinary metrics of the sustainability of diets is evident. In this study, a group of researchers from Michigan performed a systematic literature review of empirical research studies on sustainable diets to identify the components of sustainability that were measured and the methods applied to do so.

This study estimates the environmental impacts of what it terms discretionary foods - foods and drinks that do not provide nutrients that the body particularly needs. It finds that these foods account for 33-39% of food-related footprints in Australia.

This study evaluates the attainability of sustainable targets for better integrating food security and environmental impacts. Many studies have looked at how much food production could increase given a plausible mitigation solution, for example if food waste was halved from 24% to 12% then an additional 1 billion people could be fed. These studies, however, lack a temporal component that this study attempts to include, which enables evaluation of whether these advances can keep pace with projected increases in human demand.

In this modelling study, the authors examine potential trade-offs between sufficient food provisioning in the future and sustaining biodiversity. On the one hand they find that cropland expansion increases food security, particularly in areas which are currently struggling with access to safe and nutritious food.

Psychological research has shown that people often don’t make decisions on a rational basis, but rather do so heuristically - based on rules of thumb - that can systematically bias choices. This has important implications when it comes to promoting the sustainable consumption of food.

This month’s issue of Discover Society is entirely dedicated to the topic of food and eating. Tara Garnett has contributed with an article on sustainable healthy eating patterns.