OUR WRITING
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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A bowl of cooked chickpeas. Photo by Deryn Macey via Unsplash.
Essay
Solutions for the Farm of the Future
In this piece, Tom Kuehnel introduces the plant protein crop initiatives supported by the Vegan Society within the context of Brexit and protein policies.Tom Kuehnel is an FCRN member and the Campaigns and Policy Officer for The Vegan Society. The Vegan Society is the oldest vegan organisation in the world; its founding members coined the term ‘vegan’ when it was founded in 1944. The Vegan Society works towards a vegan world for the benefit of animals, people, and the planet. You can contact Tom at: tom.kuehnel@vegansociety.com    
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Tomatoes wet with dew in a garden. Photo by Janko Ferlic via Unsplash.
Essay
Organic Agriculture for 10 Billion People
In this piece, Adrian Muller takes a look at the qualities and constraints around expanded organic farming systems. His commentary is based on the paper Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture, published in Nature Communications earlier in November and summarised by the FCRN here. Adrian Muller is an FCRN member and senior researcher at FiBL (Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. 
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Rotting apples in a field. Photo by Joshua Hoenne via Unsplash.
Essay
When the food waste fight became trendy – a look at emerging attitudes in Sweden
In this piece, FCRN members Karin Östergren and Anne Normann comment on the trending behavioral patterns and consumer perspectives around SDG12.3, food loss and waste.Professor Karin Östergren is senior researcher at the Section for Sustainable Food Systems at RISE Agrifood and Bioscience and Adjunct Professor at Department of Food Technology, Engineering and Nutrition of Food Engineering, Lund University. For the past 17 years she has been project leader for a variety of projects focusing on exploring the benefits of combining her food process engineering expertise with environmental systems analysis. Research addressing resource efficiency and how to reduce food waste has been a focus in most of these projects. Recent projects are FUSIONS, where she was responsible for the work towards the harmonization of food waste monitoring methods and now she is also a part of the follow up project REFRESH.Anne Normann has MSc in Food Science with a background in clinical nutrition as a dietitian. She has been working at SIK/SP Food and Bioscience since 2012 as a project manager in sensory and consumer science. She mainly has been working with experimental research project in the field of consumer behavior, where the focus has been to increase the knowledge about why, how, when and where consumers make decisions about food choices and what could change that behavior. She started to work in the area of food waste in 2014 because of the Cosus project. She is now working in the department of Product & Perception at RISE Bioscience and Materials.
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