In two experiments where participants were asked to choose between hypothetical canteen meals, “traffic light labelling” (red, amber or green labels) of different meal options was found to shift meal choices towards those lower in carbon emissions and calorie content.

In this blog post for the UK Food Research Collaboration, researchers Tony Lewis and Erik Millstone note that the UK’s draft replacement regulations for governing food after the UK leaves the European Union (EU) allow the government to relax requirements on food traceability. The authors argue that the government may be preparing to accept lower food standards to minimise supply disruptions in the event of leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement.

This interactive tool from the European Food Safety Authority presents data on resistance to several types of antimicrobials among humans, pigs and cattle.

This book by Bee Wilson explores how changing diets affect health, social interactions and the wider world.

This book identifies common causes of food waste in developing countries and presents examples of successful food preservation methods for different food types in developing countries.

The Scottish Land Commission (a public body set up by the Scottish Government) reports that highly concentrated land ownership in some parts of Scotland hampers economic development and can be harmful to local communities.

This paper assesses the agricultural water use efficiency of different food types based on their nutrient content, instead of the conventional approach of assessing water use in terms of litres used to produce a certain weight of food. The purpose of the study is to determine whether higher intakes of nutrient-rich foods such as fruit, vegetables and seeds might conflict with the aim of minimising agriculture’s water use.

FCRN member Christian Reynolds uses linear programming to calculate diets that meet both health and greenhouse gas emission criteria while being affordable for different income groups in the UK. Generally, the optimised diets are higher in plant-based foods than diets consumed in the UK in 2013, although seafood is higher in the optimised diet than in 2013 diets.

In this paper, FCRN members Christian Reynolds and Tom Quested review the effectiveness of different consumption-stage measures to reduce food waste. Examples of successful interventions include serving food on smaller plates (which can reduce food waste by up to 57%) and changing school nutritional guidelines (which reduced waste of vegetables by 28% because fewer students selected vegetables and those who did select vegetables ate more of them).