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.

Eighty global food companies are ranked in a new report, now in its third year, representing food retailers and wholesalers, restaurants and bars, and food producers and manufacturers.

This new paper by Chatham House reports on a 12-country survey undertaken into public understanding of the links between  livestock and climate change. Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector - Global Public Opinion on Meat and Dairy Consumption finds a major lack of awareness of the meat and dairy sector’s contribution to climate change.

A decline in meat production combined with further increase in demand could spur businesses to look for alternative food protein sources, said Media Eghbal, head of countries analysis at Euromonitor International when being interviewed by the Food navigator.  

According to the latest Greendex survey by the National Geographic Society, more people are eating local and organic foods and plan to consume less meat and bottled water. However, most also believe they lack enough information and influence to become more environmentally sustainable consumers. The survey, undertaken in collaboration with research consulting firm GlobeScan, measured consumption habits and attitudes in 18 countries. Each was scored on the relative size of its environmental footprint.

This paper published in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - looks at the environmental costs of food production and in particular livestock based food production.  The paper is based on annual 2000–2010 data for land, irrigation water, and fertilizer from the USDA, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy.

In our mailing of 1st July 2014 we highlighted a new paper by Pete Scarborough et al. which compared the GHG intensity of diets adopted by vegetarians, fish eaters and meat eaters in the UK. The Oxford Martin School has now published a short interview with Pete, in which he outlines his motivation for undertaking this work, the method he adopted, and the insights gained from the study. Citation Scarborough, P., "Q&A: Should We All Become Vegans to save the Planet?" Interview by Sally Stewart. Web log post. ThinkLONG. Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, 08 July 2014. Read the full interview blog-post here. We have also highlighted Peter Scarborough’s paper in an earlier newsletter, see it and our ‘further reading’ recommendations here. 

This twentieth edition of the Agricultural Outlook, and the tenth prepared jointly between OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), provides market projections to 2023 for major agricultural commodities, biofuels and fish across 41 countries and 12 regions: OECD member countries (European Union as a region), key non-OECD agricultural producers (such as India, China, Brazil, Russian Federation and Argentina) and groups of smaller non-OECD economies in a more aggregated form. This edition includes a special focus on India.

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)  has launched a new report on sustainable diets - People, Plate and Planet, describing dietary choices that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pressures on land. The report considers nutrition, GHG emissions and land use and states that the most significant impact on these areas comes from what we eat, not where it is from or how much packaging there is around it.