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FOOD

The complexity of sustainable diets

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 720–721 (2019)Cite this article

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The EAT-Lancet Commission proposes a universal healthy diet that could help to limit environmental changes within the planetary boundaries, but further work is needed to adapt this diet to local conditions and limit unintended environmental and health impacts of changing diets.

Agriculture, especially livestock production, is one of the main drivers of environmental change. The recently published EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet and Health therefore calls for a great food transformation and outlines strategies to ensure the world’s growing population has nutritious food that is both healthy and sustainable, within safe planetary boundaries1. The Commission defines a healthy reference diet that includes substantially fewer livestock products and more plant-based foods than are currently consumed globally. According to their estimates, by 2050, the proposed diet would halve greenhouse gas emissions and prevent nearly 11 million deaths per year compared with a business-as-usual scenario. However, the Commission’s estimates show that the dietary transition alone would not be sufficient to reach the environmental targets defined in the report for food systems for 2050, but improvements in agricultural-management practices and reduction of food waste would also be needed.

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Fig. 1: Factors to consider when designing localized healthy and sustainable dietary guidelines.

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  1. Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and Department of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Hanna L. Tuomisto

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  1. Hanna L. Tuomisto
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Correspondence to Hanna L. Tuomisto.

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Tuomisto, H.L. The complexity of sustainable diets. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 720–721 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0875-5

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