How to make the shift to a more sustainable and healthy food system? Sustainable diets & Sustainable Development Goals The food system, from production to consumption and waste treatment, makes a big contribution (20–30%) to global greenhouse gas emissions and a big claim on scarce natural resources. By 2050 we will have to provide 9 to 10 billion people with healthy and sustainably produced food. At the same time this is one of the biggest global challenges today: How to make food production and consumption both healthier and more sustainable? The associated issues are diverse and concern growing world population, malnutrition, climate change and a claim on natural resources. We see that companies, governments and civil society organisations are looking for ways to define the contours of a healthy and sustainable society. The research area of sustainable diets attempts to provide answers on how to meet these challenges. However, this is rather complex. In this article we’d like to take a moment to give you more insights in how to find sound solutions to make the shift to a more sustainable and healthy food system.
The topic of sustainable and healthy food patterns is on the agenda worldwide. The term ‘Sustainable diet’ encompasses health and environmental aspects of food patterns. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) gives the following definition: 'Those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimising natural and human resources'.
This connects to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), defined by the United Nations in 2015, which is a set of 17 goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda. The second goal within the SDGs is related to the topic of sustainable diets. It is focused on ‘Zero hunger’ and includes ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’. A closer look at the SDGs tells us that nutrition is actually a vital precondition to achieve 8 out of the 17 goals.
In order to reach the goals and to make the shift to this sustainable and healthy food system, everyone needs to participate. This means governments, private sector, civil society organisations and consumers need to be involved. We see that companies, governments and civil society organisations are looking for ways to tackle the challenge and aim to define the contours of a healthy and sustainable society. However, defining healthy and sustainable food patterns is complex. To help organisations to come up with sound solutions, we have built a tool, Optimeal®, which enables to grasp the full picture of healthy and sustainable nutrition. Optimeal® makes it possible to find solutions that are evidence-based, realistic and have the ability to achieve a global impact. This tool defines healthy and sustainable food patterns based on a systematic investigation and sound environmental and nutritional data. The Optimeal engine uses either linear programming (LP) or quadratic programming (QP) to find the optimal solution.
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