13 million meals served. Zero chicken nuggets. 60% vegetarian. All fruit and vegetables, dairy, meat, eggs and cereals are sourced from France – pears from Nantes, lentils from Lyon, and Tomme cheese from Bordeaux. They’re even turning 40 tonnes of used coffee into fertiliser. At the Paris Olympic Games, France is keen to show off its culinary prestige to the 15,000 athletes, 20,000 journalists and millions of spectators. But this time, it’s with a green twist. 

This report by NGOs Sustain and Friends of the Earth calculates the quantities of manure that 10 UK livestock corporations produce – estimated at more than the 10 of the UK’s cities combined and how this directly contributes to the ecological decline of rivers. The report argues intensive agriculture is the main source of river pollution in the UK, not water companies, but reveals that only half of the ten agribusinesses mentioned have publicly available strategies to prevent pollution, and most lack detail and targets. 

This systematic review assesses the evidence base of the environmental and health impacts of novel plant-based foods (NPBFs) as compared to animal-based foods (ABFs) in food secure, high-income countries. NPBFs are defined by the researchers as new food products designed to mimic and replace ABFs and be added into habitual diets; examples include vegan meat or plant-based dairy. The researchers find that generally, NPBFs have better health outcomes and better environmental outcomes compared to ABFs. These results, however, vary by product type and context and they warn that caution should be given in the development of dietary guidelines. The authors suggest future research and policy should seek to develop more granular categories of NPBFs that account for these complex and often contextual health and environmental issues.

This report by the World Resources Institute, a global research non-profit funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation, highlights the trade-offs and counterfactual of sourcing less and better meat as a strategy for food companies to mitigate climate impacts in their supply chains. It explores a key tension in the meat debate, also highlighted in TABLE’s Meat the Four Futures podcast, that production systems associated with ‘better meat’ such as organic, often lead to higher land-use and GHG emissions per kilo. 

This article investigates the current state of nutrition and sustainability of plant-based and animal-sourced products, mainly beef. It reflects upon the different metrics used in research and how they impact research results, narratives and policies. From the literature they reviewed, the authors found there to be a consensus that plant-based beef generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventionally reared beef. They found it is more difficult to make nutritional comparisons due to the variability in plant-based beef products. Comparisons mainly focus on nutritional content, water use, land use and greenhouse gas emissions, but exclude social and economic sustainability. The authors highlight the impact of funding sources on the type of metrics chosen and call for more independent analysis focusing on a wider range of metrics.

A new study has combined rice grains and animal nutrients using cow cells to produce a hybrid food or “rice-based meat”. The authors contribute to a growing area of future food research exploring scaffolding technology for cell-cultured meat products and suggest rice as an alternative scaffold to more common soy or nut-based scaffolds.