1) Sustainable diets aim to balance environmental sustainability, health, and social priorities but defining and implementing them remains a challenge. 2) UK policy has gradually recognized the food system's unsustainability and moved from a production focus to considering consumption impacts as well. However, frameworks remain contradictory and the new government is pushing sustainable diets down the agenda. 3) The Sustainable Development Commission's 2009 report identified dietary priorities and initiatives but found limited evaluation of impacts. Comprehensive guidelines and coordinated action across sectors are still needed to make sustainable eating a reality in the UK.

1. 1
The Future of Sustainable and
Healthy Eating
Some reflections on the UK debate about
Sustainable Diet Policies, Priorities &
Strategies
Tim Lang
Centre for Food Policy, City University London
Voedingscentrum10th
anniversary conference ‘Together we explore the Future’,
held on the SS De Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands,
November 16, 2010

2. 2
Introduction
• 2000s: UK slowly realises C20th
food is unsustainable
• But what is a sustainable (low impact+healthy) diet?
• What do we do about it, if we knew?
– Leave it to markets?
– Have a strong force (Govt, companies)?
– Do nothing?
• The C20th
food system is in stress (new/old):
– Environment: climate change, H2O, soil, etc
– Health: from under-consumption to over- & mal-cons’n
– Social: inequalities are high within & between countries
– Economy: prices don’t reflect those tensions let alone £/$
• Policy frameworks are contradictory but…
• Sust Diets has crawled onto the UK policy agenda
• The Coalition Government is pushing it back (May’10)

3. 33
Cabinet Office 2008 report:
what made this happen?

4. UK Government policy, 2000s
4

5. 5
1. The growth of UK policy on
sustainable food production &
consumption
From fragments to
‘low carbon + healthy’

6. 2000s: tectonic plates move
• Environment: climate change, soil, water etc.
• Resilience: 2000 Lorry strike ‘5 days from shortages’
– Food resilience in question:
 MoD / Cranfield Defra study / Chatham House
• Economy: 2006-08 commodity price spike
Food Matters (HMT PMSU):
 Companies worry about UK buying power
• Health: 2000-07 obesity crisis grows
 National Audit Office (2001), Wanless (2002+04),
CMO (2003), Commons Health Comm.ee (2004),
Chief Scientist’s Foresight report (2008)
6

7. Meanwhile, institutional reform
• 1990s: MAFF in crisis over food safety,
BSE…
• 1997: Blair and ‘new’ Labour elected
• 2000: creation of FSA, Environ’t Agency, SDC
• 2001: Curry Commission focus on enviro +
farm modernisation
• 2006-08: global food rises  G Brown review
• 2008: Cabinet Office Food Matters report
• 2009: SDC Setting the Table  Integrated
Advice to Consumers 7

8. 8
2. Slow realisation sustainable
production is not enough.
Sustainable consumption has to
be addressed

9. Policy has a difficult mix:
• A material world with limits
• A biological world which is fragile
• Human physiology created c.500k yrs ago
• A food system delivering ‘feast day’ food daily
• Price signals which don’t internalise costs
• Advertising and marketing distorting needs by
amplifying wants
• Government reluctant to direct consumers
• Consumers who believe they have choice 9

10. The result?
• Unsustainable Food Production
• Unsustainable Food Supply Chains
• Unsustainable modes of Retailing
• Unsustainable Diets
• Unsustainable Waste
10

11. 11
3. What can we do?

12. What can we do? Options
• Focus on consumers?
– Label, educate, inform, appeal to do ‘right thing’
• Focus upstream?
– Change food composition, ‘choice-edit’
• Alter land use?
– Meat & dairy are key ‘hotspot
• Do nothing?
– But pressure is building up
• Leave it to EU? Others?
12

13. 13
T Lang view: this requires ‘Omni-
Standards’ across food
T Lang (2010) Environment & Planning A, August
Quality:
• Taste
• Seasonality
• Cosmetic
• Fresh (?)
• Identity / authenticity
Social values:
• Pleasure
• Localness (identity)
• Animal welfare
• Working conditions
• Equality
• Cost internalisation
• Trust
Environmental:
• Climate change
• Water
• Land use
• Soil
• Biodiversity
• Waste reduction
Health:
• Safety
• Nutrition
• Access / affordability
• Information & education

14. 14
Complexity could be done:
OmniStandards in a label + traffic lights
source: Sustain © 2007

15. 15
UK public consciousness
Current appeals
• Eat locally
• Dieting
• Low / no meat
• Sustainable fish
• Organics
• Waste & recycling
• Old ways of eating
Connotations with the past
• World War 2 diets
• Rationing
• Thrift (due to constraint)
• The past

16. 16
4. This is the terrain the
SDC’s Setting the Table
report set out to clarify

17. 1717
UK’s Sustainable Development
Commission project 2009
• A scoping project – ie opening not final words
• Taking issue across gov’t: DH, FSA, Defra, EA etc
• Contracted to Oxford University BHF HPG
• 3 processes:
– Literature review
– Stakeholder consultation
– Review existing positions & interventions
• Developed a hierarchy of priorities
• Report done, consulted + Govt and sent to Defra

18. 1818
Key findings
• no definition of ‘sustainable diet’ yet agreed but
stakeholders see need for one
• Identified 10 key guidelines for sustainable diets
• Reviewed 44 published academic research studies
and reports
• Found more positive synergies (win-wins) than
tensions (win-lose) eg
– Lowering consumption of low nutritional value foods
(fatty/sugary foods & drinks) has mainly +ve impacts on
health, environment and reducing social inequalities.
• Found gaps in the evidence, most notably with
respect to economic impacts of dietary changes.
• Produced a 3-level hierarchy of behavioural impact

19. 1919
Identified existing UK framework
guidelines = ‘soft’ cultural advice
• Consume less food
and drink
• Accept different
notions of quality
• Accept variability of
supply
• Shop on foot or over
the internet
• Cook and store foods
in energy conserving
ways
• Prepare food for more
than one person and
for several days
• Reduce food waste
• Reduce consumption
of meat and dairy
products
• Reduce consumption
of food and drinks with
low nutritional value
• Reduce consumption
of bottled water

20. 2020
Changes where health, environmental,
economic and social impacts are likely
to complement each other:
• Reduce consumption of meat & dairy
products
• Reduce food & drink of low nutritional value
(fatty, sugary foods + tea, coffee & alcohol)
• Reduce food waste.

21. 2121
Changes likely to have a significant
positive sustainability impact, but
where gains in one area might have a
more negative impact elsewhere:
• Increase fruit & veg consumption,
particularly seasonal and field grown
• Consume only fish from sustainable stocks
• Eat more foods produced with respect for
wildlife & environment e.g. organic food

22. 2222
Changes making smaller contribution to
dietary sustainability, with largely
complementary effects across issues
• Reduce energy input by shopping on foot or
over the internet
• Cook & store food in energy conserving ways
• Drinking tap water instead of bottled water

23. 2323
Reviewed practical initiatives
• Found 40 on sustainable food supply
– Govt  local food growing projects
• Assessed 12 for the breadth of sustainability
• Only 3 initiatives had good sustainability scope
• Few had adequately evaluated possible impacts
• Some +ve moves towards consistency
– eg Healthier Food Mark for public sector caterers

24. 2424
Recommendations include:
• DA(F) to oversee cross-Govt guidelines
– Step 1: FSA Eatwell Plate become Sust Diet
– Step 2: develop full sustainability guidance
• Defra, FSA, DAs
– seek EU position
– develop evidence on behaviour change
• Food Research Partnership explore
‘hotspots’ eg meat & dairy, fish, soy, palm
• Explore implications for consumer
behaviour and supply chains

25. 25
5. Where to now?

26. Policy positions in UK vary
• ‘It’s all dangerous, so avoid, ignore & resist’:
– Small business, some big business, right wing
• ‘Business-as-usual’ (consumer responsibility):
– Pragmatists, some sections of business
• ‘Sustainable intensification’: (production
focus)
– Chief Scientist’s Foresight project (reports late
2010), FAO Sust’ble Crop Intensific’n Div
• ‘Whole system change’:
– Policy outer circle eg SDC, NGOs, green business26

27. If we are serious, Sust Diet means…
27
Change
from …
…to… …with trouble
ahead over…
Nutrition
guidelines
Eco-nutrition
guidelines
linking calories with
carbon
Food products Total diet Eco-brand images
Control green
claims
Verifiable
standards
Advertising and
marketing
Global all year
sourcing
Sustainable
seasonality
Defining
sustainability
Low cost food
as a good
Full cost
accounting
Consumer
expectations

28. We’ll change what & how we eat
FOOD WHY WHAT
Meat Cancer; water;
land use
Offer less; mainly or
only grass-fed
Coffee / tea Water; labour
conditions
Less; only fair trade;
drink water
Fruit All year round? Seasonal
Fish Health vs. fish
stock collapse
Eat less; only
MSC?; alternatives
Vegetables Health; water;
GHGs; Kenyan
beans?
Seasonal greens
28

29. 29
Companies engaging
• International companies:
– 2002: SAI launched Groupe Danone, Nestlé, Unilever
– 2009 (Oct 16): G30 top TNCs initiative Coca-Cola, Tesco,
Unilever, News International
– 2010: World Economic Forum process (out 2011)
• UK companies:
– 2007: IGD Food Industry Sustainability Strategy
Champions Group focus on low carbon + ethics
– 2008: Tesco gives £25m Manchester SCI
– 3 retailers’ choice-edit M&S Plan A, Co-operative Group, Waitrose
• A product specific approach, not overall diet

30. Governments start to act (but
focus on consumer choice)
• Sweden publishes Environmentally Effective
Food Choices (2009) = 1st
Sustainable Diet document
• Appeals to responsible consumers & agri-food chain
• Germany: Council on SD’s shopping advice
• NL: Towards Sustainable Production &
Consumption (June 2008)
• France: INRA-CIRAD sustainable food systems (2009-11)
• UK: Integrated Advice to Consumers (led by
Food Standards Agency)
30

31. Civil society / NGOs
• Bubbling UK ‘democratic experimentalism’
– Sustain: www.sustainweb.org.uk
– WWF: One Planet Diet
– CIWF: ‘eat less meat’ campaign
– Friends of the Earth: meat campaign
– Fife Diet (Vancouver 100 mile diet)
– Food4Life project (2006-11): school food
• International NGO debates about:
– Need to go beyond ingredients to processes
– Full labelling being too complex; can lead to
‘blame the consumer’? [SDC agrees] 31

32. 32
6. Meanwhile a new UK
government is elected
(May 2010)

33. New Coalition Government
• Focus on cuts:
– Axeing central gov’t and arms-length bodies
– FSA, HPA, SDC, RCEP, CFPA, SACN, etc
• Hints that Food 2030 strategy to remain in
some form with focus on delivery
• Health Responsibility Deals to ‘work with
not against business’ (Alcohol, fitness, food, behaviour,
work)
• Infrastructure uncertainties ahead
– Research, Skills, Education, Standards 33

34. Policy future is less certain
• Language of ‘Sustainable Diets’ is out, but
‘low impact diets’ might be in
• It’s unclear what this means:
– Omni-standards or just low carbon?
• Meanwhile some business worries & acts:
– PepsiCo UK commits to lower many impacts
by 50% in 5 years (but not to sell less Pepsi!)
– Tesco audits for embedded water
– Sainsbury has its ‘Storecard’ (private system)
– M&S Plan A, Co-op, etc = ‘choice editing’ 34

35. Conclusions
• Food system symbolises wider challenges
– It’s complex but not incomprehensible
– It requires multi-level /-sector /-disciplinary work
– It links material, biological, cognitive and social
• The UK discourse on Sust Diets is normal:
faltering, subject to pressure, messy, but
interesting
• Can we generate leadership & incentives?
Yes, but how and who acts is up for grabs
35

36. 36
Thanks!
t.lang@city.ac.uk