Sustainable Diets Working Group

Assessing and improving the sustainability of food systems is a complex challenge. There are no universally-agreed criteria of measuring it, and policy makers face difficult trade-offs, e.g. promoting healthy diets at the expense of the domestic food processing industry. 

Sustainable diets research is a relatively new field, and as yet there has been little synthesis of evidence or sharing of knowledge as to best practices. Metrics used tend to focus on greenhouse gas emissions as a means of quantifying environmental impacts, but other measures such as land use change and water footprints have also begun to emerge. Methods for devising or modifying diets tend to involve variations on optimisation models such as linear programming, and these methods have their limitations. 

The ANH Academy Sustainable Diets Working Group aims to generate innovative methods and metrics for use in sustainable diets research and policy development through interdisciplinary research. It includes a group of experts in agriculture, environmental or physical science, nutrition and/or health research, with a particular focus on methods and metrics in sustainable diets

Resources

Sustainable Diets Learning Lab presentation at ANH2017 in Kathmandu, Nepal