The Food Climate Research Network has published a major new report focusing on China’s changing food system. Appetite for Change provides a detailed and integrative analysis of the dramatic changes in China’s food system over the last 35 years, and explores the linkages among the environmental, health, economic and cultural trends that are emerging.  

We are pleased to announce a new FCRN discussion paper which considers the increasingly topical question of: ‘What is a sustainable healthy diet?’ 

Late December last year Tara Garnett, researcher on food systems and climate change and coordinator of the FCRN, initiated a meeting that brought together Marian Dawkins, Prof in Animal Behaviour at Oxford University, Jude Capper, researcher and livestock sustainability consultant who has worked mainly in the US, and Elin Röös, Swedish LCA researcher and the initiator of the Swedish Meat Guide,  for an informal discussion on the subject of sustainable intensification of agriculture and what that entails for the animal welfare of farm animals.

In April 2014 the Food Climate Research Network organised a workshop, funded and hosted by the Wellcome Trust with additional support from the Food Security programme of the UK research councils. Its aim was to bring people together to develop a research agenda on how our eating practices might be shifted in healthier and more sustainable directions.  Particular emphasis was placed on meat eating as an exemplar of an important, yet difficult aspect of our consumption practices, and one with a strong bearing on health and sustainability.

Government leadership and substantial investment in research are needed to shift global consumption habits towards eating patterns that are both healthy and sustainable, say academics, industry and NGOs representatives in this report.

In 2014, the FCRN released a major report entitled Appetite for change: social, economic and environmental transformations in China’s food system. This provided a detailed and integrative analysis of the dramatic changes in China’s food system over the last 35 years, explored emerging environmental, health, economic and cultural trends and challenges, and identified policy and research implications.  

Today sees the launch of a new report published jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) at the University of Oxford. Plates, pyramids and planet evaluates government-issued food-based dietary guidelines from across the globe, looking in particular at whether they make links to environmental sustainability as well as personal health. 

This literature review, undertaken by the Food Climate Research Network and Chatham House, and in association with EAT who also kindly supported the work, considers what the evidence has to say about effective ways of shifting people’s consumption patterns in more sustainable and healthy directions.

The FCRN and the Food Foundation have jointly produced new report based on a meeting, held November 2016, on the topic of metrics for sustainable healthy diets for the food industry. While a range of sustainability metrics for this industry already exists, none comprehensively measure the progress (or otherwise) that food companies are taking to foster a public shift towards more sustainable and healthy eating patterns (SHEPs). The meeting report considers whether further work on such a set of metrics would be of use.