Fronting up: UK sustainable food systems in the spotlight
This snapshot analysis of the 2017 Food Sustainability Index (‘FSI’) forms part of our work on the unleashing the power of indexes. The FSI is produced by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (‘BCFN’) Foundation and the Economist Intelligence Unit (‘EIU’).
Our analysis of the UK’s position in the 2017 FSI draws on the FSI results to ask ‘how is the UK really doing?’ and goes on to set out the initial steps needed for the UK to become a true global leader on food, farming, health, the environment and animal welfare.
The FSI ranks the UK eighth out of the 34 countries included in the index and at a regional level shows the UK to be lagging behind its European counterparts on food sustainability, coming a lowly eighth out of the 10 European countries listed (only ahead of Russia and Greece).
Fronting up also reveals the UK to be doing badly on issues including childhood obesity, exclusive breastfeeding rates, healthy life expectancy and climate change action, and argues that it is time to front up to the reality that the UK is not a global leader on food sustainability.