Sustainable healthy diets | TableDebates

Image of beige and pink beans courtesy of Digital Buggu via Pexels

TABLE launches new beans video with BBC Ideas

The humble bean is taking up more room in research agendas and consumer consciousness, called upon as a valuable tool in modern challenges from climate change and malnutrition to the rising cost of living. TABLE launches a new video in collaboration with BBC Ideas that asks, what is it about beans?

Cover of the Nordic Nutrient Report 2023, featuring a cartoon of three people having a communal meal

New Nordic Nutrition Recommendations

The Sixth Edition of the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR2023) is the newest collaboration between Nordic researchers, written over a period of four years and used to determine national dietary guidelines in Baltic and Nordic countries. The report has been ongoing since the 1980s, with the last published in 2012. This edition of the report is the first to take into account environmental factors and it demonstrates the synergies between a healthy diet and one that is low in environmental emissions.

Cover for the report titled “Eating for Net Zero: How diet shift can enable a nature positive net-zero transition in the UK” published by WWF in 2023, featuring a background photo of several bowls of plant-based dishes on a wooden table.

Eating for Net Zero: How diet shift can enable a nature positive net-zero transition in the UK

This report published by WWF-UK lays out how UK population diets can become more healthy and sustainable and how that shift can support national climate and nature targets.

Four cows stick their heads between the rails of their enclosure. Photo from Pexels.

News and resources

Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay

This article from The Guardian discusses the lobbying, media, and marketing tactics employed by the US beef industry to safeguard its interests. The author Joe Fassler highlights the industry’s use of extensive networks and resources to promote potentially misleading claims around the sustainability of beef production and consumption and contrasts it with scientific evidence showing beef on average to be the single most climate damaging food in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, this article asserts that the US beef industry is engaged in “an all-out public relations war to pre-empt environmental criticisms” in order to maintain a hold over consumers.

A person lifts a burger towards their face which is out of focus behind the burger. Photo by Szabó Viktor via Unsplash.

News and resources

The Secret Ingredient That Could Save Plant-Based Meat

Yasmin Tayag of The Atlantic discusses her experience tasting plant-based bacon made with ‘lab-grown’ or ‘cultivated’ fat produced by San Francisco start-up Mission Barns. It is hoped that cultivated fat may encourage more people to eat less meat (which would have environmental benefits and address concerns around animal suffering) by providing a plant-based meat alternative that tastes as good as the real thing.

The cover of Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape by Henry Dimbleby, featuring a donut colored to look like the world with a bite taken out of Europe.

Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape

This book provides a behind-the-scenes look at the current food system and its destructive nature. Author Henry Dimbleby explains not just why he thinks the food system is a disaster waiting to happen, but what can be done about it.

Chicken, bacon, and sausages cooked on a barbeque. Photo by Marcus Spiske via Unsplash.

Journal articles

Friend or Foe? The Role of Animal-Source Foods in Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Diets

There has been a lot of discussion about the health and environmental benefits and risks of animal-source foods (which include meat, fish, eggs and dairy). This paper examined the current evidence on these benefits and risks, finding that these impacts vary massively depending on local context and population development.

Anatomical model of the human heart. Photo by Jesse Orico via Unsplash.

Journal articles

Meat alternatives can lower your cholesterol, study finds

This paper estimates that plant-based diets can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by improving blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and body weight in comparison to traditional meat-containing omnivorous diets. However, it is less clear whether these same benefits are consistent in diets containing processed meat alternatives.

Charcuterie plate with mustards, cheeses, fruits, relishes, bacon, and breads. Tim Toomey via Unsplash.

Meat, metrics and mindsets: Exploring debates on the role of livestock and alternatives in diets and farming

Should we eat meat, eggs, dairy and other animal-sourced foods? If so, how should we produce them and how much should we eat? If not, what should we eat instead? These are just some of the more contentious debates about the future of food systems.This Explainer summarises some of the key debates about livestock and its alternatives and describes both the arguments and the evidence underpinning different points of view. We look both at foodstuffs (meat, fish, plants and new foods based on cells grown in bioreactors) and farming methods (both intensive and extensive) with regards to discussions about their environmental, health and social impacts. In so doing, we explore the assumptions and values that often lead stakeholders to differing conclusions about what a sustainable food system looks like.https://doi.org/10.56661/2caf9b92