This blog by Daniel Tan, Senior Lecturer in Agriculture at University of Sydney, discusses how one might eat both healthy and sustainably.

The book ‘Challenging Consumption’, produced by the CONSENSUS research team, explores the topic of sustainable consumption. It includes discussions on future scenarios and innovations for sustainable food consumption practices. The book was launched in Dublin on 12th June 2014 by Dara Lynott, a Director of the Environmental Protection Agency who funds CONSENSUS research.

This research argues that we need to implement a food waste hierarchy approach to preventing and managing food surplus and waste. It argues that a distinction between food surplus and waste is crucial as is the distinction between avoidable and unavoidable waste. Its main message is that food waste can be prevented by adopting a sustainable production and consumption approach and by tackling food surplus and waste throughout the global food supply chain.

A summary of a discussion on sustainable diets, hosted by the Guardian, is now available on their website. It sought to take a holistic approach to the interlinked issues of food, farming, environment and health, focusing on the issues of how a sustainable diet should be defined and achieved.  Discussants included Jo Confino (Chair) Executive editor, the Guardian, Tim Lang Professor of Food Policy, City of London and David Nussbaum Chief executive, WWF, Tim Smith Group quality director, Tesco. You can read the summary here. See also FCRN discussion papers focusing on what a sustainable healthy diet is and how it can be achieved.

This issue of "Green Growth the Nordic Way”, a web magazine from the Nordic Council of Ministers, discusses the topic of circular economy and the work of the Council within the areas of waste management and sustainable building. 

New official data from the European Union shows a 19.2 % reduction on GHG emissions on 1990 levels, suggesting that the union is within reach of its target to reduce emissions by 20% until 2020. Emissions fell by 1.3 % between 2011 and 2012, largely due to reductions in transport and industry and a growing proportion of energy from renewable sources. Italy alone accounted for 45 % of the total EU net reduction in emissions in 2012, largely due to lower emissions from transport and industry.

This study is one of the very few that examines the GHG impacts of a selection of real life ‘self selected’ diets as opposed to those that are modelled or hypothetical.  It looks specifically at the dietary patterns (based on a standard 2,000 kcal diet) of UK vegetarians, semi-vegetarians and non-vegetarians.  Approximately 55,500 subjects were chosen for the study, all part of the EPIC-Oxford cohort study.

An international panel of scientists is calling for an evidence-driven debate over whether a widely used type of insecticide is to blame for declines in bees and other insect pollinators.

This paper provides a review of the current literature analysing environmental impacts of dietary recommendations. The review focuses on three aspects of dietary advice in particular: reducing the consumption of fat, reducing the consumption of meat-based protein and animal-based foods, and finally increasing the consumption of fruit and vegetables. It then reviews the environmental impact assessments and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) that have been undertaken in foods that have relevance to these three dietary recommendations.