Mario Herrero, a scientist formerly with ILRI and now serving as chief research scientist of agriculture and food at Australia’s CSIRO, recently gave a seminar at the University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. The title of Herrero’s 19 Sep 2019 seminar was ‘Can we feed the planet and stay within planetary boundaries’. He focused on the EAT-Lancet Report on healthy diets (Commission Food in The Anthropocene: The EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems, 16 Jan 2019), to which he contributed, along with 36 other experts. Continue reading
Tag Archives: EAT
First ever global scientific eating plan forgets the world’s poor
A team of world-leading scientists have just released the world’s first ever scientific eating plan. They say the current food system dangerously overproduces greenhouse gases, misuses fertiliser, and causes large-scale food wastage and massive land degradation. Their solution is to shift to a diet that transforms this damaging food system. While this sounds like a silver bullet, it doesn’t recognise the enormous differences across the world when it comes to food consumption and production systems. Continue reading
Lawrence Haddad on the ‘Great Food Transformation’ promoted by the EAT Lancet ‘planetary health diet’
Lawrence Haddad, executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and this year’s co-winner of the World Food Prize (along with David Nabarro), has published his reaction to the recent EAT Lancet report calling for a ‘Great Food Transformation’. Continue reading
Are we eating less meat?—Oxford Martin School fellow Hannah Ritchie confirms ‘No’
No matter how often we hear “EAT LESS MEAT” we eat more meat when we can afford it, because we like it. @HannahRitchie02 reports. Continue reading
Where nutrients and protein sourced from livestock remain vital—Crawford Fund
‘Coinciding with the launch of the EAT-Lancet “Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems” report, Dr Colin Chartres, the [Crawford] Fund’s CEO, . . . discusses the importance of ‘smart foods’ and smart people for a healthy population and planet. Continue reading
Climate change policy must distinguish (long-lived) carbon dioxide from (short-lived) methane–Oxford study
a group of scientists recently published a paper on the importance of distinguishing—and treating differently—two of the most common greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is a long-lived emission and methane a short-lived one. The paper outlined a better way to think about how much, and how long, carbon dioxide and methane gases contribute to greenhouse gas emissions budgets. Continue reading
FAO sets the record straight–86% of livestock feed is inedible by humans
FAO has set the record straight regarding not just the level of greenhouse gas that livestock emit (see yesterday’s posting on this blog) but also incorrect information about how much food (crops eatable by humans) livestock consume, the regular reporting of which is commonly used to bolster arguments for the world to go vegetarian. Continue reading
FAO sets the record straight on flawed livestock emission comparisons–and the livestock livelihoods on the line
As the media frenzy caused by a ‘planetary health diet’ proposed in a new report from an EAT-Lancet commission this month continues, it is perhaps timely to recall that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has set the record straight regarding a flawed comparison of greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock and transport sectors, a statement that is commonly used to support arguments for the world to stop eating meat. Continue reading
IFPRI’s Shenggen Fan on the ‘differentiated approach’ needed to navigate today’s food systems
The following sensible comments were recently made by Shenggen Fan, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Fan is one of the 37 authors of the new report making the media rounds, Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, and a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health. Continue reading