This paper quantifies what the environmental impacts would be if the typical US diet were to shift in line with the USDA dietary recommendations. The paper has created a lot of interest and debate since it shows that shifting towards healthier diets in some cases can increase the energy, emission and water intensity of the diet. This is why we wanted to provide a more extensive summary and some commentary below. Please do read, share and add your own comments. For a comment by the study's lead author Michelle Tom see here and for another comment by Professor Michael Hamm see here. 

This FAO report identifies global trends and major drivers of change shaping the future of food and agriculture in the 21st century. It points to the advances that have been made within food and agriculture in the past years, analysing the current state of play and identifies a number of challenges that remain if we are to achieve FAO’s vision of a world free from hunger and malnutrition.

The World Cancer Research Fund International has created the NOURISHING policy database which has now been updated and holds 390 policy actions from 125 countries, and 70 evaluations.

This report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and commissioned by UK’s Eating Better Alliance looks at future policies towards livestock farming and trade in the UK and EU.

As Asda becomes the first UK retailer to sell ‘free range’ milk, the Pasture Promise logo will be placed on the milk packages, to ensure consumers that the cows grazed for 180 days and nights and farmers were offered fair price.

This paper asks the question “Can agriculture be sustainable?”  It argues that, if we want to take a different path, we will have to make the choice to do so. It emphasises that we need to be clear that we have choices - options that need to be debated rather than subsumed in a dialogue of crisis and food shortages. The paper outlines some of these options in order to pursue a more sustainable pathway.

This is a new book on the concept of sustainable intensification in the context of smallholder agriculture.

Barbara Hendricks, Germany’s environment minister, has recently announced that her ministry will no longer be serving meat, fish or meat-derived products at official functions citing environmental concerns and a desire to serve as a “role model” on environmental and sustainability issues.

In a recent public survey commissioned by the Global Food Security (GFS) programme, many British adults say they recognise that the food system is a key contributor to climate change and that they would change their diets to avoid negative future climate impacts.