The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems

Key messages:

• Food systems sit at the nexus of health, environment, climate, and justice. A food systems transformation is fundamental for solving crises related to the climate, biodiversity, health, and justice. The central position of food systems emphasises the interdependent nature of these crises, rather than each crisis separately, which highlights the need to position food systems change as a global integrator across economic, governance, and policy domains.
• The updated planetary health diet (PHD) has an appropriate energy intake; a diversity of whole or minimally processed foods that are mostly plant sourced; fats that are primarily unsaturated, with no partially hydrogenated oils; and small amounts of added sugars and salt. The diet allows flexibility and is compatible with many foods, cultures, dietary patterns, traditions, and individual preferences. The PHD also provides nutritional adequacy and diminishes the risks of non-communicable diseases. At present, all national diets deviate substantially from the PHD, but a shift to this pattern could avert approximately 15 million deaths per year (27% of total deaths worldwide). Such a transition would reduce the rates of many specific non-communicable diseases and promote healthy longevity.
• Food drives five planetary boundary transgressions, including land system change, biosphere integrity, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, and approximately 30% of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. How and where food is produced, which foods are produced and consumed, and how much is lost and wasted, all contribute to planetary boundary transgressions. No safe solution to climate and biodiversity crises is possible without a global food systems transformation. Even if a global energy transition away from fossil fuels occurs, food systems will cause the world to breach the Paris Climate agreement of limiting global mean surface temperature to 1·5°C.
• Human rights related to food systems (ie, the rights to food, a healthy environment, and decent work) are not being met, with nearly half the world’s population below the social foundations for these rights. Meanwhile, responsibility for planetary boundary transgressions from food systems is not equal: the diets of the richest 30% of the global population contribute to more than 70% of the environmental pressures from food systems. Just 1% of the global population is in a safe and just space. These statistics highlight the large inequalities in the distribution of both benefits and burdens of current food systems. National policies that address inequities in the distribution of benefits and burdens of current food systems would aid in ensuring food-related human rights are met.
• The PHD needs to be available, affordable, convenient, aspirational, appealing, and delicious. To increase demand for healthy sustainable diets and enable necessary dietary shifts, food environment interventions, next-generation culinary research and development, increased purchasing power, and protection and promotion of healthy traditional diets are important actions.
• A food systems transformation following recommendations from the EAT–Lancet Commission—which include a shift to healthy diets, improved and increased agricultural productivity, and reduced food loss and waste—would substantially reduce environmental pressures on climate, biodiversity, water, and pollution. However, no single action is sufficient to ensure a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. Comparing 2050 values with the current state (as of 2020), a shift to healthy diets in isolation could lead to a 15% reduction in agricultural emissions, compared with a 20% reduction when all three actions are implemented simultaneously with improvements in productivity and food loss and waste. Individually, all three actions modestly reduce future nitrogen and phosphorous use (ie, a 27–34% increase by 2050 with individual actions vs a 41% increase under the business-as-usual scenario); however, in combination they substantially reduce future growth in nitrogen and phosphorous use (ie, a 15% increase compared with 2020 levels of use).
• Additional environmental benefits are accrued through sustainable and ecological intensification practices. Unprecedented investments and effort in these practices could potentially result in a net-zero food system. A diversity of context-specific practices can sequester additional carbon biomass, create and connect habitats, reduce nutrient applications, and increase the interception and capture of excessive crop fertiliser before it pollutes groundwater and surface water systems. These practices can be enabled by securing equitable access to land and water resources, strengthening public advisory services, addressing structural imbalances between producers and dominant agribusinesses, and through public and private sector investments that support farmers shifting towards sustainable practices.
• A food systems transformation following recommendations from the EAT–Lancet Commission could lead to a less resource-intensive and labour-intensive food system that can supply a healthy diet for 9·6 billion people, with modest impacts on average food costs. However, such a transformation would have profound implications for what, how, and where food is produced, and for people involved in these processes. For example, as a part of this restructuring, some sectors would need to contract (eg, a 33% reduction in ruminant meat production) and others would need to expand (eg, a 63% increase in fruit, vegetable, and nut production) compared with 2020 production levels.
• Justice is needed to unlock and accelerate action for transformation. A fair distribution of opportunities and resources—such that the rights to food, a healthy environment, and decent work are met, and distribution of the responsibility to produce, distribute, and consume healthy diets within planetary boundaries is fair—are the basis of a successful food systems transformation. Power asymmetries and discriminatory social and political structures prevent these rights from being met, which results in harms to people’s health, precarious livelihoods for food systems workers, and lack of voice, undermining freedom, agency, and dignity. Ensuring liveable wages and collective bargaining, while regulating and limiting market concentration and improving transparency, accountability, representation, and access to information, are all impactful actions. We emphasise the protection of basic human rights in conflict areas as a fundamental foundation of justice.
• Unprecedented levels of action are required to shift diets, improve production, and enhance justice. A just transformation requires building coalitions with actors from inside and outside the food system, identifying bundles of actions, developing national and regional roadmaps for implementation, unlocking finance for the transformation, and rapidly putting joint plans into action. Such efforts should closely align with other sustainability and health initiatives (eg, the Paris Agreement, Kunming– Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and nationspecific food-based dietary guidelines). These frameworks have all identified food systems actions as powerful, particularly in their capacity to integrate across goals. Mobilising and repurposing finance is essential for enabling this transformation.