The EAT-Lancet Commission’s planetary health diet provides guidance on how to eat for the welfare of people and planet. However, there are enormous practical difficulties associated with achieving the required large-scale food system and dietary shifts. This presentation will outline a rationale for why we should care about food sustainability, both in general and in the context of preventing obesity. It will explain the urgency of achieving a sustainable food system, outline the types of food-related policies that are needed across the ecological spectrum to develop such a system, and discuss the factors impeding progress.
To demonstrate the critical role of the food system in influencing human and planetary health, the presentation will profile research undertaken within the Healthy Food, Healthy Planet, Healthy People NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence. Over the last five years, this program of work has involved literature reviews, market audits, qualitative and quantitative consumer research, and health/sustainability outcomes modelling. Focus areas have included: (i) generating planetary health scores incorporating numerous environmental indicators for individual food products and broader food categories, (ii) comparing food products’ planetary health and nutrient profiling scores, (iii) examining the legitimacy of sustainability claims in the food market, (iv) assessing the sustainability of food packaging types used in the Australian market, (v) applying varying definitions of ultra-processing to the Australian packaged food supply, (vi) developing modified versions of the Health Star Rating to account for products’ environmental sustainability and ultra-processing status, (vii) determining whether front-of-pack nutrition labels constitute an effective proxy for food products’ sustainability status, and (viii) identifying marketing practices used to promote and distribute unhealthy and unsustainable foods. In combination, these research projects provide an overview of the role of the food supply at the intersection of planetary and human health, with important implications for aligning obesity prevention and sustainability goals.