Year: 2017
Type: report
Abstract: Despite convincing evidence of the very considerable impact that food systems and human diets exert on public and planetary health, concerted guidelines and policy action that include sustainable aspects, in addition to healthy nutrition, are lacking in Europe.Sustainable diets are nutritionally adequate, safe, and healthy, while having low environmental impact.They are also culturally acceptable, accessible, equitable, economically fair and affordable, contributing to food and nutrition security and to healthy lifestyles for present and future generations.Food and nutrition policies can be powerful instruments for the promotion of population health and provide key levers for improving food systems; however, sustainable development involving food systems has been limited and fragmented.Key issues necessary to improve the quality of diets and to reduce damaging environmental impacts are increasing the consumption of more plant-based diets, including more vegetables, pulses, fruits and whole-grain cereals, as well as decreasing the consumption of animal-origin foods (i.e.red meat and processed meat), in particular when not coming from sustainable sources (e.g.over-exploited fish species), and avoiding foods and beverages containing trans fats, or with high content of saturated fats, added sugar or salt.Strategies to promote sustainable healthy nutrition should be planned and implemented at both EU and nation state levels, involving all sectors of society and all levels of the food chain, including governments, local authorities, farmers, environmentalists, and representatives of the food industry, of retail organisations, of catering, of marketing, of the media, of academia, of NGOs, of civil society and of consumers themselves.Public health professionals may provide an alternative, independent source of authority, suitably positioned to harness political and public support to prioritise implementation and monitoring of these strategies, through development of suitable metrics to measure both health and sustainability, and evaluation of the impacts of implementation in both the public and private sectors of the economy on population and planetary health.The private
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2617579295