The government is set to put sustainability on an equal footing with healthy eating in a move experts say has dramatic implications for the food and drink sector.
Defra's Council of Food Policy Advisors has announced it is to undertake an 18-month project defining and beginning to implement a low-impact healthy diet, a project it describes as needing "the constant drive of powerful, heavyweight leadership".
One of the earliest stages of the work is to integrate sustainability concerns, into the eatwell dietary advice, which is used both in schools and online. Advice will include switching to grass-fed meat and shifting to a seasonal diet.
The project will also include cross-governmental work to take the full impact of food supply chains into account, which it concedes will be challenging given the limited data available and complexity of factoring in different targets, such as carbon, other greenhouse gases and water use.
Industry is expected to take a leading role, with the council calling on all food industry companies to name a board member to oversee their sustainability strategy.
The move comes in the same week as a highly unusual joint editorial in health journals The Lancet and BMJ warned of the severe health consequences of climate change and named diet as a major factor.
"We are especially concerned about the effects of climate change on health," said Professor Sir Michael Marmot, one of the editorial's co-authors, "and so called for a thorough examination of food production to investige its impact on health and sustainability. Research has suggested, for example, that red meat could have negative effects on both health and sustainability. The agendas can work together."
But Charlotte Lawson, the Food and Drink Federation's director of member services, warned that healthy eating and sustainability agendas often worked in different directions.
"What we have found in work with Defra on the Healthier Food Mark is that health and sustainability often don't rub well together," she said. "It's easy to end up with a mishmash of criteria that don't add up to something that would address the bigger issues of climate change."
Lawson said the CFPA's work over the next 18 months would help address the lack of a coordinated sustainability strategy, but urged the government to be realistic.
"We are committed to doing our part to avoid climate change, but the government strategy must strike a balance between the requirements of healthy eating, the sustainability targets it would like to achieve, and what the industry is able to deliver in this difficult economic climate."
Defra's Council of Food Policy Advisors has announced it is to undertake an 18-month project defining and beginning to implement a low-impact healthy diet, a project it describes as needing "the constant drive of powerful, heavyweight leadership".
One of the earliest stages of the work is to integrate sustainability concerns, into the eatwell dietary advice, which is used both in schools and online. Advice will include switching to grass-fed meat and shifting to a seasonal diet.
The project will also include cross-governmental work to take the full impact of food supply chains into account, which it concedes will be challenging given the limited data available and complexity of factoring in different targets, such as carbon, other greenhouse gases and water use.
Industry is expected to take a leading role, with the council calling on all food industry companies to name a board member to oversee their sustainability strategy.
The move comes in the same week as a highly unusual joint editorial in health journals The Lancet and BMJ warned of the severe health consequences of climate change and named diet as a major factor.
"We are especially concerned about the effects of climate change on health," said Professor Sir Michael Marmot, one of the editorial's co-authors, "and so called for a thorough examination of food production to investige its impact on health and sustainability. Research has suggested, for example, that red meat could have negative effects on both health and sustainability. The agendas can work together."
But Charlotte Lawson, the Food and Drink Federation's director of member services, warned that healthy eating and sustainability agendas often worked in different directions.
"What we have found in work with Defra on the Healthier Food Mark is that health and sustainability often don't rub well together," she said. "It's easy to end up with a mishmash of criteria that don't add up to something that would address the bigger issues of climate change."
Lawson said the CFPA's work over the next 18 months would help address the lack of a coordinated sustainability strategy, but urged the government to be realistic.
"We are committed to doing our part to avoid climate change, but the government strategy must strike a balance between the requirements of healthy eating, the sustainability targets it would like to achieve, and what the industry is able to deliver in this difficult economic climate."
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