Sustainable healthy diets | TableDebates

Effects of climate change would encourage most British adults to change their diet

In a recent public survey commissioned by the Global Food Security (GFS) programme, many British adults say they recognise that the food system is a key contributor to climate change and that they would change their diets to avoid negative future climate impacts.

Sustainability Challenges in the Agrofood Sector

This new 712 page book in 28 chapters is edited by Rajeev Bhat. It addresses a very wide range of topics on agriculture, food and sustainability.

Photo credit: Migle, Flickr, Creative Commons License 2.0

Dietary guidance for pulses: the challenge and opportunity to be part of both the vegetable and protein food groups

This paper provides an overview of dietary guidance for pulses, discussing their nutritional composition and health benefits as well as the evolution of the way in which the USDA’s dietary guidelines categorise pulses. The paper was published in a special issue on The Potential of Pulses to Meet Today’s Health Challenges: Staple Foods in the journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Photo credit: Vincent-Lin, Fish, Flickr, Creative Commons License

Assessing the inclusion of seafood in the sustainable diet literature

This systematic review considers how seafood is currently incorporated and assessed in the sustainable diets literature and examines the barriers to more adequate inclusion of seafood within research on sustainable diets.

Short BBC radio programme: Can we eat our way out of climate change?

Tara Garnett (FCRN) and Sue Dibb (Eating Better) spoke on BBC World Service’s Inquiry programme about food consumption in relation to climate change.

Index aiming to reflect both climate impact and nutritional impact of food products

This paper by FCRN member Corné van Dooren and colleagues reports that higher greenhouse gas emissions tend to be generated in the production of energy dense foods and lower in nutrient dense foods, and that emissions show significant correlations with 15 nutrients, including saturated fat, animal protein and sodium. Using these finding, the authors propose a ‘Sustainable Nutrient Rich Foods’ (SNRF) index, which summarises both climate and nutritional impacts of individual foods.

Metrics for sustainable healthy diets

Metrics for sustainable healthy diets: why, what how?

While governments have a major role to play in stimulating a shift towards sustainable healthy diets, food companies are the gatekeepers of consumption. The food that companies produce and sell, the way they market them, and at what price, are all crucial influences on what people eat. This report considers if we need a set of indicators to assess companies’ progress and hold them to account?

Metrics for sustainable healthy diets: why, what, how?

The FCRN and the Food Foundation have jointly produced new report based on a meeting, held November 2016, on the topic of metrics for sustainable healthy diets for the food industry. While a range of sustainability metrics for this industry already exists, none comprehensively measure the progress (or otherwise) that food companies are taking to foster a public shift towards more sustainable and healthy eating patterns (SHEPs). The meeting report considers whether further work on such a set of metrics would be of use.

Talk on policies in a post Brexit world and more sustainable diets

David Baldock, a Senior Fellow and former Executive Director of IEEP, gave a Food Thinkers talk at an event organised by the Food Research Collaboration, entitled: "Horses and Carts: can policies in a post Brexit world harness farming to more sustainable diets?"