Lancet Commission 2019: Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems

This report from the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems addresses the need to feed a growing global population with a healthy diet while also improving sustainable food systems that minimize damage to the planet. The commission describes a “universal healthy reference diet”—which relies on increased consumption of plant-based foods and decreased consumption of unhealthy foods, including red meat, sugar, and refined grains—in order to provide major health benefits, such as reducing the incidence of diet-related obesity and lowering mortality from diet-related noncommunicable diseases like coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. The commission also integrates global targets for sustainable food systems and aims to provide scientific boundaries to reduce environmental degradation caused by food production, which is among the largest drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, interference with global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land-system change, and chemical pollution. The report includes five strategies to achieve a “Great Food Transformation,” including seeking national and international commitment to shifting toward healthy diets; reorienting agricultural priorities to emphasize the production of healthy food over large quantities of food; sustainably intensifying food production to generate high-quality outputs that are more environmentally sustainable; strengthening and coordinating governance of land and oceans; and reducing food loss and waste by at least half, in line with global sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This commission report is accompanied by a summary report as well as a series of briefing documents for key stakeholders, including cities/urban planners, farmers, food service professionals, health care providers, policymakers, and the general public.