This new study by FCRN member Paul Behrens and colleagues investigates the environmental impacts of a nationally recommended diet when compared to the national average diet for 37 nations across the world, including 9 middle income nations.

Scientists from national academies across Europe are calling for urgent action on food and nutrition in a new independent report published by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC). This analysis can be relevant for policy-makers working on food, nutrition, health, the environment, climate change, and agriculture.

This report, authored by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and commissioned by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, shows how food systems affect health through multiple, interconnected pathways, generating severe human and economic costs – and points to levers that can help to address the critical health issues and compounding factors that contribute to poor health, such as climate change, poverty and inequality, and unsanitary conditions.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has published a report titled, ‘Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition,’ focused on Asia and the Pacific. Key messages from the report highlight that the fight against hunger is slowing, but malnutrition and stunting among children below the age of five remains high.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, schools chancellor Carmen Fariña and Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams announced that 15 Brooklyn schools will participate in Meatless Mondays in spring 2018. The program will provide participating schools with healthy, all-vegetarian breakfast and lunch menus every Monday. The NYC mayor, First Lady Chirlane McCray and Gracie Mansion will also go meatless for all Monday meals.

The new report by World Wildlife Fund, Appetite for Destruction, highlights the vast amount of land that is needed to grow the crops used for animal feed, including in some of the planet’s most vulnerable areas such as the Amazon, Congo Basin and the Himalayas.

The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science and Unilever partnered to host a workshop on sustainable nutrition. Researchers (including the FCRN’s Tara Garnett) gathered at the LCIRAH center in London to translate current findings from research on sustainability, food systems, nutrition and diet into actions that can effectively be implemented by Unilever through its brands, products and services.

Public policy action tank Brighter Green has published a discussion paper on changing food environments and the effects on global public health. Author Judy Bankman examines the challenges created by the recent and swift adoption of a “Western”-style diet in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

This paper presents the findings of a food systems model that considers how specific agronomic characteristics of organic agriculture could be harnessed so as to enable it to play a greater role in sustainable food systems.