This report from the Rockefeller Foundation uses true cost accounting to assess the United States food system. It finds that (quantifiable) annual costs to health, the environment and biodiversity are US$3.2 trillion - around three times higher than US expenditure on food, which is US$1.1 trillion per year. The report finds that people of colour are disproportionately affected by negative impacts including non-communicable diseases, food insecurity, and air pollution exposure.

This report from the UK’s Vegan Society explores how policies, principles and legislation could lead towards a sustainable plant-based food system. It aims to avoid a polarised “vegans vs. farmers” narrative and instead aims to find common ground between stakeholders. It uses a “multi-criteria lens” to consider the food system from the perspectives of animal equity, human health, economy and just work, climate change and ecosystems, and social and cultural values.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has released the first draft of a new Global Biodiversity Framework. The framework is built around a vision of “living in harmony with nature” by 2050, and sets out 21 targets for protecting biodiversity to be achieved by 2030. It stresses that civil society, indigenous and local communities, women, youth and business and finance communities must all be involved in implementing the framework.

The National Food Strategy, an independent review led by Henry Dimbleby for the UK Government, sets out a vision for the future food system, focusing primarily on England. Describing itself as “an interventionist strategy”, it aims to change diets between 2019 and 2032 to include 30% more fruit and vegetables, 50% more fibre, 25% less HFSS food (high in fat, sugar or salt), and 30% less meat (of all kinds).

This paper compares detailed nutritional properties of burgers made from a plant-based meat replacement (based on soy) and from grass-fed ground beef. It concludes that, although the macronutrient contents (e.g. protein, fat) of both options are similar enough that consumers reading nutrition labels may view them as nutritionally interchangeable, there are significant differences between the two in the levels of 171 out of 190 metabolites studied. 

In this paper, TABLE member Philippa Simmonds analyses the debate around meat taxes in the UK, using media analysis and interviews with key stakeholders, and assesses how perspectives in the debate align with various political ideologies. 

In this paper, George Cusworth, Tara Garnett and Jamie Lorimer of the Oxford Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) project explore six narratives about the role that legumes can play in the future European food system. They identify three issues that these narratives are responding to as well as three areas of consensus about the potential of legumes.

On 9 July 2021, TABLE and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food co-hosted an “Ask The Author” session with Carl Obst (IDEAA-group) and Lauren Baker (GA), discussing Chapter 1 "From Practice to Policy: New Metrics for the 21st Century", from the new 2021 book True Cost Accounting for Food: Balancing the Scale.

The Wageningen Alternative Protein Project, a student-led initiative, has launched a new podcast series on alternative protein and the technologies used to produce it.