Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems

In collaboration with Lancet, EAT, a global not-profit foundation, released a report titled Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems. This report highlights that there is substantial scientific evidence that inextricably links environmental sustainability and health. This report is a collaboration between 37 experts from 16 countries with expertise in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, food systems, economics and political governance.
 
The crux of the report is that food is the single strongest lever that can optimize and nurture human health and environmental sustainability on Earth. The current global food production and consumption is risking people’s health as well as threatening climate stability and ecosystem resilience, thereby constituting the single largest driver of environmental degradation and transgression of planetary boundaries.
 
Food systems create environmental impacts along the entire supply chain, from production to processing and retail, reaching beyond human and environmental health, by also affecting society, culture, economy, and animal health and welfare. While the global food production of calories has generally kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people still lack sufficient food and many more consume either low-quality diets or too much food.
 
The disproportionate impacts of the two “end points” of global food systems i.e. final consumption (healthy diets) and production (sustainable food production) calls for its urgent and radical transformation. Without such action, the world is severely at risk of failing to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement. This entails a severely degraded planet where a massive chunk of the population will increasingly suffer from malnutrition and preventable diseases.
 
A dietary shift by 2050, towards plant-based foods and fewer animal source foods will be necessary for the world to garner improved health and environmental outcomes. Thus, the global consumption of nuts, legumes, vegetables and fruits must be doubled and the consumption of sugar and red meat must be reduced by more than 50%. However, there is lack of global consensus about the constitution of healthy diets and sustainable food production.
 
Within this context, the EAT-Lancet Commission has for the first time, established clear, scientific and quantitative targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production. The adoption of an integrated global framework of a planetary healthy diet can help avoid severe environmental degradation as well as the deaths of 11 million human beings annually.
 
For this Great Food Transformation, widespread multi-sector collaborations are required to facilitate a substantial global shift towards major improvements in food production practices, healthy dietary patterns as well as massive reductions in food loss and waste. Food is the defining feature of the 21st century and there exists and unprecedented opportunity to unlock its potential, as a common thread between multiple international, domestic and business policy frameworks and strategies, to catalyze the achievement of both, the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.
 
India Outbound
January 18, 2019
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/healthy-diets-from-sustainable-food-systems/