Business Forum: planet-friendly diets

Business Forum: planet-friendly diets

Planet-friendly diets: what question/s should we be asking?

In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health published what was mooted to be the first set of global scientific targets for healthy diets. It set out key environmental boundaries for food production, flagging the disproportionately large impact that food has on planetary boundaries. It “showed that feeding 10 billion people a healthy diet within safe planetary boundaries by 2050 is both possible and necessary.”

It was claimed that adopting such a ‘Planetary Health Diet’ would help avoid severe environmental degradation and prevent millions of premature adult deaths every year. However, it was also criticised, including by those who challenged the idea of a global reference diet, given the varied local and national contexts for our food.

A lot has happened in the past five years. In advance of the next EAT-Lancet report, due in 2025, it’s an important time to explore the nuances, complexities and new understandings of planet-friendly diets.

This in-person dinner meeting in central London will provide an opportunity for participants to:

• Consider what ‘planet-friendly diets’ might mean and whether/ how the concept could be useful
• Assess how far removed UK diets are from this and the practical implications for UK food & farming businesses
• Decide the critical question that those working in agri-food businesses should be asking about planet-friendly diets (for discussion in the second half of the evening and during a subsequent ONLINE discussion at 12pm on 2nd July)
• Explore what shifts are needed by those working in the sector – from chefs to supermarket chief execs – and what policy environment would enable healthy, sustainable diets to flourish.

Speakers will include Chantelle Nicholson (multi-award winning chef, owner of Apricity Restaurant in Mayfair and one of a select number of recipients of a Michelin Green Star, awarded every year to restaurants that uphold outstanding sustainable and eco-friendly culinary practices) and Professor Tim Benton (Research Director and Director of the Environment and Society Centre, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House). Dan Crossley, Executive Director of the Food Ethics Council, will chair the meeting.