The Centre for Biological Diversity has calculated the emissions produced by the food offered at the ongoing COP24 climate conference, arguing that the many meat-based options mean the menu has an “unnecessarily high carbon foodprint”.

The World Resources Institute has published a new report outlining solutions for feeding 10 billion people without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty.

In this report, the Food Ethics Council analyses the 2018 Food Sustainability Index (view interactive graphics here), which ranked the UK 16th out of 28 European Union countries and 24th out of 67 countries when averaged across a range of food sustainability indicators.

This editorial in The Lancet argues that countries and people should “limit their consumption of intensively farmed meats”, discusses recent papers on the environmental and health impacts of meat production and consumption, and points out that policies to reduce meat consumption may have to be tailored to different contexts.

The Association of UK Dietitians (BDA) has released a toolkit for environmentally sustainable diets, which contains information on eating patterns for health and environmental sustainability, a glossary, frequently asked questions and a list of meal swaps.

This report finds that the ten largest US food and beverage manufacturers lack comprehensive strategies for effectively addressing obesity and diet-related diseases. Assessing a portfolio of the manufacturers’ products, the report classifies only 30% as “healthy”.

A special issue of the journal Science includes several review papers on important questions in the connection of diets and health, including dietary fat, gut microbiota, fasting and diets for athletes.

This report by the UK Health Forum argues that the UK’s current food system does not support the UK government’s healthy eating goals. For example, many subsidies support animals products and relatively few support fruit, vegetables and pulses, while healthy foods often cost more than unhealthy foods.

Two commentary pieces question the findings of the study “Association of Frequency of Organic Food Consumption With Cancer Risk”, which claims that higher organic food consumption is associated with a lower risk of cancer. The pieces point out that only two cancer types showed a statistically significant reduction in risk, and that the reduction in cancer risk only appeared to hold true for older women, not men, younger adults or people with a high overall quality of diet.