Sustainable Diets Food for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet: Workshop Summary (2014) / Chapter Skim
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5 Options and Approaches to Enable Sustainable Food Choices
5 Options and Approaches to Enable Sustainable Food Choices
Pages 81-106
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She emphasized the importance of cross-silo collaboration when developing new sustainable diet policy and identified specific policy targets in the United States, a key one being the U.S. dietary guidelines.
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For her, sustainability encompasses not just the present and future health of our food economies and our environment, but also social justice for all populations engaged with the food system, especially given that disenfranchised populations are often hardest hit by environmental resource limits. Finally, Feenstra challenged workshop participants to consider that many options exist for addressing the complexity of sustainable food choices.
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." LESSONS FROM ACROSS THE ATLANTIC: POLICY FAULTINESS AND POLICY POSSIBILITIES ON SUSTAINABLE DIETS1 The European Union, with 27 countries, is not just a large region, but also has complex systems of food governance, Tim Lang suggested. His intention was to provide workshop participants with the flavor of sustainable diet policy activities across Europe, with an emphasis on policy activities aimed at resolving some of the tensions being discussed during this workshop.
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He described what is happening in Europe with respect to sustainable diet policy as a rethinking of the food system, a process that started in the 1940s but with no "lift-off" yet. He described current activity as different policy approaches "jostling for position." Civil Society The European Union is home to some very powerful NGOs that are well organized and cover sectoral interests familiar to the United States, including environmental, human health, consumer, and animal welfare lobbies.
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Lang summarized NGO policy activity evolving in the European Union around sustainable diets as a process of "bubbling democratic experimentalism," a mixture of championing the integrated approach to sustainable food and diets and challenging policy makers, industry, and the public itself. A key tension emerging from all work is whether policy should be based on consumer choice (assuming consumers are in control of their food and the food system)
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They follow their research funding, which comes mostly from the European Union, but also national governments, companies, and some foundations. So far, most thinking around sustainable foods is through the lens of "low-carbon and healthy." There is no sustainable diet equivalent of the Eurodiet -- a set of common guidelines about population health.
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specific products. Lang referred workshop participants to a 2012 FoodDrinkEurope report, Environmental Sustainability Vision Towards 2030 (FoodDrinkEurope, 2012)
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. This report called for systems-level change thinking, not just product LCA and paved the ground for new panEuropean thinking summarized in the 2013 Sustainable Food consultation (European Commission, 2013)
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Lang encouraged workshop participants to read the Swedish report The National Food Administration's Environmentally Effective Food Choices (Livsmedelsverket, 2009) , which he described as the "best attempt anywhere on the planet to produce sustainable dietary guidelines." The report considered the best environmentally conscious ways to proceed, given key foods that Swedes eat, and recommended eating seasonally.
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"We've got to address the critics," he said. The case for sustainable dietary guidelines deserves support, Lang opined.
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1986) Kate Clancy observed that although some progress has been made since she and co-author Joan Dye Gussow concluded that sustainable diets require both a farm policy and an overall food policy as described in the above quote, both policy goals are still quite far away.
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But there are many gaps in the evidence base as well, "far too many gaps," in Clancy's opinion. Many recommendations put forth for sustainable dietary guidelines are qualitative, not quantitative, due to a lack of research attention and statistical uncertainties around greenhouse gas emissions and other phenomena (Health Council of the Netherlands, 2011)
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. Clancy also noted the many good policy ideas put forth by workshop speakers, all of which could be compiled into a policy research agenda for building sustainable diets that could be disseminated both inside and outside government.
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Although its effect on changing food choices has a mixed history, there have been some successes. If environmental concerns become incorporated into dietary guidance, dietary guidance can also be used to educate the public about the entire food system and, in Clancy's words, "its utter dependence on ecological health." In addition to being a tool, dietary guidance is also a signal that the government recognizes its role in providing the best food and dietary advice to the public in order to protect public health and understand the links between health, environment, and food security.
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. OPTIONS AND APPROACHES TO ENABLE SUSTAINABLE FOOD CHOICES: RESEARCH PRIORITIES16 Has research been successful in connecting dietary guidance, human health, and environmental protection?
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is a necessary condition for people to be healthy. Researchers are beginning to explore that connection as it relates to food choices.
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and reiterated that the global food supply depends on very few species. Only 12 plant species account for 75 percent of the global food supply, and only 15 mammal and bird species account for 90 percent of animal agriculture (FAO, 1998, 2007)
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Wilkins highlighted several key research needs to help understand the connection between environmental protection and dietary guidance. First are questions related to diet composition, especially the different roles of plant versus animal protein in a sustainable food system.
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. Dietary Guidelines: The Need for a New Framework The dietary guidelines are intended to promote health and reduce chronic disease (USDA/HHS, 2010)
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It provides a conceptual framework for selecting the kinds and amounts of foods of various types which together provide a nutritionally satisfactory diet." In the end, the goal is to encourage food choices that do two things: promote not just optimal health and disease but also sustainable regional food systems. A new framework, or conceptual model, for developing new dietary guidelines and food guides should be based not only on what is known about the relationship between diet and health, but also on lessons from communication and behavior change research and theory and on seasonality and other regional food system sustainability criteria.
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dietary guidelines do not actually seem to be doing what they are intended to do, that is, prevent chronic disease. She noted the rapid rise in obesity and diabetes after the dietary guidelines were created in the late 1970s.
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2015 dietary guideline revision an opportunity to inject environmental thinking. He mentioned the "bitter fight" to do this in the recent Australian dietary guidelines, finalized in 2013 (Australian Government, 2013)
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So, rather than asking for any single change, she would ask for that conscious commitment, regardless of whether the issue is commodity subsidies or the Environmental Protection Agency budget or something else. Without that commitment and an integration of that thinking, she said "we can't get anywhere." Lang would request at least two environmental scientists on the dietary guidelines revision committee; that the terms of reference for the revision committee include the need to address environmental considerations; and that the Institute of Medicine, professional societies, and others set up "watchdog" dietary guidelines monitoring committees representing a diversity of disciplines.
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2013. Australian dietary guidelines.
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2009. The national food adminis tration's environmentally effective food choices.
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2010. Dietary guidelines for Americans.
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