Will humans stomach a different diet to create a more sustainable future? And what can cities do to alter our eating habits? We take a look at the meat and potatoes of changing what we eat and how this process is transforming the urban environment.
You Are What You Eat
At least, that’s what we were told. Today, however, the planet is what we eat, and suffice to say it’s not looking good.
The food we consume and the way it’s produced has serious implications for the state of the Earth. The global food system alone – encompassing production, processing, and distribution – accounts for 26 per cent (13.7 billion tonnes) of global greenhouse gas production, with meat production being the largest contributor.
Currently, half of the planet’s habitable land is used for agriculture, with eighty per cent of this dedicated to livestock production (including grazing land and land for producing animal feed).
Agricultural expansion is already driving 90 per cent of deforestation around the world, and, as demand for farming land continues to increase, so does the pressure on vulnerable ecosystems and natural resources.
By 2021, agriculture accounted for 70 per cent of global freshwater withdrawals and 78 per cent of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication. It has also been listed as a threat to 24,000 of the 28,000 species on the IUCN Red List.
Send It Back
Despite the environmental cost involved in feeding the Earth’s population, when it comes to human health and equality, the globalised food system has produced patchy results at best and disastrous ones at worst.
The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020, with one-in-three people unable to access adequate food.
Increasing levels of food insecurity also mean that healthy diets are simply out of reach for many people – in both the Global North and South – leaving them to consume higher amounts of processed, calorie rich foods that contain high levels of saturated fats and sugars.
This has serious implications for human health. According to one study, the risk that poor diets pose to mortality and morbidity is now greater than the risks of “unsafe sex, alcohol, and drug and tobacco use combined”.
All of this isn’t to mention the plight of the food workers along every link in our supply chains, many of whom continue to experience rampant exploitation while a handful of corporations reap the profits.
To Your Health – And the Earth’s
The upshot is simple enough: feeding a burgeoning population without destroying our planet or exacerbating the inequalities in our food system requires a revolution in what and how we eat – and the clock is ticking.
The EAT-Lancet Commission was one of the first organisations to try and quantify what this would look like. In 2019, it convened a team of 37 leading scientists in the areas of health, agriculture, political science, and environmental sustainability to produce the first set of global scientific targets for healthy human diets and sustainable food production.
The commission’s final report didn’t mince words: if humanity is to produce enough healthy food to nourish itself within the bounds of what the planet can sustain, it needs to make some dramatic changes to its diet.
In a nutshell, the shift to a ‘planetary health diet’ – as the commission termed it – would require all of us to consume double the amount of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes and 50 per cent less meat and sugar.
What Do Cities Have To Do With It?
Although the commission provided broad strategies for achieving the shift to a planetary health diet, it largely avoided placing the responsibility for change on any one sector.
However, with nearly 80 per cent of food produced globally being consumed in urban areas, it’s only natural that cities would have an outsized influence in transforming food systems for the future.
The good news is that many are already working on ways to encourage a shift in what we eat.
In 2019, for example, 14 cities signed on to the C40 Good Food Cities Declaration, pledging to align food procurement policies to the planetary health diet, support more plant-based food consumption, reduce food loss and waste, and develop strategies in partnership with citizens, businesses, and public institutions to implement these.
Copenhagen, as part of the Shifting Urban Diets project, is already putting these ideas into practice. The city has engaged Gehl Architects and City University of London to study how the built environment determines and influences people’s food choices and eating habits, as well as implementing a series of training programs to teach kitchen staff and the public to prepare healthy and sustainable meals in line with the planetary health diet.
The Challenge
Although there are movements in the right direction, it goes without saying that changing what people eat is no small task. While food may be the “single strongest lever to optimise human health and environmental sustainability on Earth”, it’s impossible to ignore the personal, social, cultural, and political aspects that are attached to it, as well as the enormous barriers these present to change.
What’s Your Beef?
Meat consumption is a case in point. Despite the environmental and health cases against eating too much meat, our appetite for it shows no sign of slowing down. Why? Some commentators have pointed to the ‘meat paradox’ as an explanation; however, there would appear to be more to the issue than moral disengagement alone.
For one, attitudes toward eating meat vary greatly according to country and culture. In many places, for example, meat is still inextricably linked to cultural traditions. (One only has to think about the Australian attachment to lamb on the barbie or Spaniards and their jamón serrano.)
On the other hand, people in developing countries are eating more meat as their incomes rise above poverty levels and these areas become more urbanised.
To complicate the picture even further, the choice to eat meat has often been co-opted as an issue in the culture wars. In Europe, for example, politicians who have campaigned to reduce meat consumption have found themselves on the receiving end of furious backlash, and even the UN has struggled to implement food sustainability policies in this area when faced with opposition from powerful agricultural lobbies and interest groups.
A Truly ‘Planetary’ Diet?
The idea of a planetary health diet itself is not without its own detractors.
One study has shown that, while shifting to the EAT-Lancet diet might be affordable for those earning average incomes in high-income countries, it is well beyond the means of the world’s poor. In fact, even in a country like the US, eating to the planetary health diet can be more difficult than you might think.
Is It All Death and Taxes?
Suggested solutions to the challenge of shifting human diets are many and varied –running the gamut of the carrot, stick, and everything in between.
At the national level, some have called for the introduction of so-called ‘sin taxes’ on sugar, salt, and meat to reflect their cost to the environment and the health system. Similar initiatives have been successful in the past, although, as this study points out, lawmakers need to be aware of the political narratives at play in doing so.
Taxation, however, is usually a tool reserved for national governments. And while cities can exert some influence, there are other measures they might consider in order to encourage residents to eat healthier, more sustainable diets.
A Nudge and a Wink
Implementing nudge interventions, for example, which aim to influence people’s behaviour through subtle changes, is well within the power of cities, particularly in the context of school cafeterias and government buildings where they control procurement.
In one study, “displaying thoughtfully framed environmental messages on restaurant menus”, such as “small changes can make a big difference” and “join a movement of people choosing foods with less impact on the climate” was shown to double the possibility of diners ordering vegetarian menu items.
Another study has shown that simply increasing the number of plant-based options available can encourage healthier, more sustainable choices. This can go hand and hand with measures at the city, state, and national levels to incentivise the production of plant-based or alternative proteins, including lab-grown meat.
It Starts With Your Next Meal
But if we’ve learnt anything from the decades of inaction on climate change, it’s that we can’t rely on governments, global organisations, or cities alone to do the work for us. Despite the challenge that shifting human diets presents, the barriers to individual change are few and far between. Social influence can be crucial in determining the spread of different dietary behaviours, which means your choices matter – not just in terms of your own impact but for the attitudes of your social peers.
The path to both you and your city eating a more sustainable diet begins with the choice to sit down to a healthier, more sustainable meal – be it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So, what’s on the menu today?