Background

About one quarter of all UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – and about one third globally - are related to food. Changing the food system – how we produce, manufacture, and consume food – is necessary if we are to reach our climate goals. Animal-based products have a much higher GHG footprint than most cereals, fruits and vegetables, which means we can achieve a large reduction in emissions by changing what we eat. Government-funded reports have called for reductions in meat consumption in the UK: the independent National Food Strategy (NFS) called for a 30% reduction by 2032, and the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for a 35% reduction by 2050. To meet these targets would require transformational change in food consumption behaviour in the UK, but such large scale changes are not without precedent. To achieve sustainable food systems we need a broad suite of interventions and policies targeting how meat is marketed, sold or made available across different food settings, learning from the evidence on changing the retail environment to encourage healthier food purchasing.

The logo for the Sustainable and Healthy Interventions for Food Transitions or SHIFT

Over the course of the three years (expected end Oct. 2026), the Sustainable Healthy Interventions for Food Transitions, or SHIFT, project will explore dietary behaviour change, and in particular meat and dairy consumption, in order to facilitate healthier, more sustainable diets in the UK. The project as a whole will investigate, analyse and design policies and interventions which target dietary change and produce a policy toolkit for reducing meat consumption in the UK.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by Professor Pete Scarborough of the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, the SHIFT project aims to:

  1. Review and analyse evidence on the successes and failures of UK policy to enable healthy, sustainable diets.
  2. Work with the public, policymakers and food system partners to co-design policies and interventions aimed at reducing meat consumption in the UK.
  3. Conduct trials in different food settings of the effect of interventions and policies on meat consumption and dietary quality.
  4. Model the long-term health, economic and environmental impacts of the interventions and policy scenarios if delivered at scale in the UK.
  5. Quantify the gap in health and environmental outcomes between modelled scenarios and proposed targets.
  6. Disseminate findings directly with the public and policy through targeted engagement activities.

What TABLE is doing

TABLE’s work will support the first and second aims to 1) review and analyse evidence and 2) work with the public, policymakers and food system partners to co-design policies and interventions aimed at reducing meat consumption. We will start by conducting an historical evidence review of UK diet change efforts from World War II onwards. Our review will focus on a variety of documentary sources, including academic and grey literature as well as policy documents, which aim to change people’s diets to be healthier and more sustainable. We will also talk to a range of policymakers and implementers to explore how that history relates to current research and policy work, strategies and ambitions.

Then, informed by this evidence, we will carry out a series of workshops to explore different stakeholder visions of a UK food future defined by healthy, sustainable diets and what pathways might lead to these.

Collaborative approach

TABLE’s interdisciplinary research team is one of several SHIFT partners working with Professor Scarborough and the Nuffield Department of Primary Care. The project team also includes: at the University of Oxford, the Nuffield Department of Population Health and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; at Newcastle University, the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and, outside academia, Sustain, Sustained, and Sustainable Food Places. The research team is organised into four work packages to ensure we deliver the six project aims.

Together, we will work with the public, civil society organisations, policymakers and food industry partners to ensure the solutions studied in SHIFT are acceptable, practical and deliverable. Through co-design, and with our policy implementation partners, we will identify the pressing needs of those working on the ground to change policy; ensure that our evidence feeds directly into their work; and translate our findings into policy relevant outcomes on health, health inequalities and household economics.

TABLE’s interdisciplinary research team is one of several SHIFT partners working with Professor Scarborough and the Nuffield Department of Primary Care. The project team also includes: at the University of Oxford, the Nuffield Department of Population Health and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; at Newcastle University, the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and, outside academia, Sustain, Sustained, and Sustainable Food Places.

Explore TABLE's existing work on consumption

collage of historical adverts for protein foods
Publication
Primed for power: a short cultural history of protein
The history of protein, from its 'discovery' and naming in 1838, is a story weaving science, nutritional politics, cultural attitudes to food, and much more. An understanding of this history is invaluable if we are to contextualise the current focus on protein that characterises discourses about health and sustainable food systems, and popular beliefs about fitness and nutrition. In this piece, we trace the history of protein from 1838 through to the end of the 'Protein fiasco' in 1974, discovering many echoes of the modern day. Table of contents: Introduction Section 1: The primary substance Section 2: Meat makes meat: the first protein fashion Section 3: Testing the lower limit: the end of the first protein fashion Section 4: 1918-1955: milk, aid and biopolitics Section 5: Protein fiasco Section 6: Epilogue Suggested citation: Blaxter, T., & Garnett, T. (2022). Primed for power: a short cultural history of protein. TABLE, University of Oxford, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University and Research. https://doi.org/10.56661/ba271ef5 https://www.doi.org/10.56661/ba271ef5
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Foodsource
Explainer
How are food systems, diets, and health connected?
Today, billions are malnourished: not eating a diet containing energy and nutrients in healthy amounts. Both lack of food and excess of consumption cause huge levels of disease worldwide. To a significant extent, the food systems in which people participate determine what people can and do eat (i.e. their diets); and as a consequence, their health. Food systems are, therefore, central to solving many of the world’s biggest health challenges. But the way in which they affect health in different regions and among different groups of people is complex, and varies greatly. An understanding of these interconnections and their effects is needed, in order for food systems to be changed in ways that promote human wellbeing.
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Foodsource
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What can be done to shift eating patterns in healthier, more sustainable directions?
Eating patterns (or diets) are an important point of interconnection in food systems between human health and wider environmental impacts. Shifts in how people consume towards sustainable health eating patterns can bring multiple benefits. And when they are undertaken by whole populations, their overall effects can be considerable. Although there is much we still don’t know, the broad trends of what sustainable health eating patterns look like are known well enough to take action today. However, this presents another difficult challenge: how can eating patterns (at the individual and population scale) be shifted towards those that are healthier and more sustainable? Understanding this problem and its potential solutions provides a useful primer on the way in which consumption in food systems takes place through a combination of human choices (whether conscious or not), and is influenced by the wider contextual environment that actively constrains and influences these choices.
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Foodsource
Explainer
What is a healthy sustainable eating pattern?
The environmental and nutritional attributes of different food types can vary greatly. Consequently, diets composed of different sets of food types, will differ in their environmental footprints, and in their nutritional quality; so affecting human health. When such differences are multiplied by many millions of people, the overall effect is considerable. Human diets are, therefore, an important point of interconnection in food systems via which change is driven – for better or worse – by shifts how people consume. At least in theory, diets might provide a means by which to achieve both health and environmental goals simultaneously. But the reality is not so simple. Understanding these complexities, helps provide a window on both the opportunities and difficulties of taking a food systems approach, and on the important role that diets play.
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Photo credits: Rawpixel via Pexels - https://www.pexels.com/photo/sweet-gummies-on-a-plate-1931439/
Explainer
What is ultra-processed food? And why do people disagree about its utility as a concept?
The increasing consumption of industrially processed convenience foods, soft drinks, and fast foods has been associated with a rise in non-communicable diseases, overweight and obesity. This building block explores the concept of ultra-processed food: how it has been defined, and differing views as to whether it is a useful way of thinking about food and its relation to health and wider sustainability concerns. Last update: 2 July, 2019 https://www.doi.org/10.56661/ca3e86f2
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A couple of bowls of vegetarian meals on a table
Letterbox
Series 4: Vegan or flexitarian - which diet is healthier?
In the quest for sustainable healthy diets, it is common to hear recommendations to reduce the amount of animal-sourced foods consumed in high-income countries. But what level of reduction is optimal for human health? For the best nutritional and health outcomes, should we be eating low-meat “flexitarian” diets, or entirely plant-based diets? In this Letterbox exchange, nutrition researcher Flaminia Ortenzi and physician Dr Tushar Mehta share their perspectives on the relative health and nutritional impacts of purely vegan diets compared to those that contain low levels of animal-sourced foods. Flaminia focuses on the nutrient density of different foods, while Tushar discusses data on the health outcomes of different diets.  
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Image: Ksenia Chernaya, Wooden Kitchen Utensils And Vegetables, Pexels, Pexels Licence
Essay
Feeding the Future: What do modern Brits actually eat? Contribute to important new research
Dr Keren Papier is a Senior Nutritional Epidemiologist working in the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU), based in the Oxford Department of Population Health, at the University of Oxford. Her research at the CEU includes investigating diet and disease associations using large-scale cohort data (including the Million Women Study, EPIC-Oxford and the UK Biobank). She is also the principal investigator for the Feeding the Future Study (or FEED).
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