EAT-Lancet 2.0: new version of the controversial 2019 report

In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission published the first set of global scientific targets for healthy diets, and set forth six environmental boundaries for food production, flagging the disproportionatly large impact that food has on the planet.

The resulting EAT-Lancet reference diet promoted increased consumption of nuts, fruits, legumes and vegetables and suggested that global consumption of red meat and sugar needed to decrease by more that 50 % by 2050. The adoption of the ’Planetary Health Diet’ would help avoid severe environmental degradation and prevent approximately 11 million premature adult deaths annually, it claimed.

The first EAT-Lancet report was celebrated by many for bringing the issues of health, diet and sustainability to the fore. Others complained it contined crucial shortcomings. Wageningen researchers, for example, claimed that EAT-Lancet lacked ’practical applicability’; failed on scientific rigor in crucial points and put forward ’politically alarmist claims’.

EAT-Lancet 2.0 will, however, build on the findings of the first publication, it was announced, and will accelerate progress and contribute to SDG-s by including several new elements: (1) greater inclusion of a diversity of diets and production processes evaluated as healthy, sustainable and equitable; (2) greater focus on inclusion, both in the composition of the Commission and in the local diets; (3) a new focus on food justice and social system goals; (4) a 12-month global consultation (to be started this June) with the aim of increasing local legitimacy; (5) and IPCC like modelling efforts to evaluate multiple transition pathways to health, sustainable, and just food futures.

EAT-Lancet 2.0 is due to report in 2024. The Commission is made up of 25 commissionaires from 19 countries, to reflect diverse perspectives across continents and in various fields including human health, agriculture and livestock production, political science, behaviour change, food justice, and environmental sustainability.

Johan Rockstörm, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research commented: „Scientifically, we know today that there is no safe landing in the climate crisis, unless we solve the food crisis. The same applies to biodiversity, freshwater, nitrogen, phosphorus, air pollutants and chemicals. Food is, and will be, the culprit or the saviour determinig our future on Earth. We therefore better get it rihgt, for all.”

Dr. Gunhild Stordalen, EAT Founder and Executive Chair, added: „There has been progress since the first EAT-Lancet in 2019, and this should be applauded. But critically we still lack consensus on global targets, and that means the key trendlines are not yet bending in the right direction. We continue to accelerate in the wrong direction, on a full collision course with nature, away from a future worth having from humanity. The escalating climate and nature crises, the entire cascade of interconnectected crises scream out to us that we have indeed entered the territory of ’Code Red for Humanity’ as the UN Secretary-General termed it, and what’s wrong with food sits at the heart of it all. EAT-Lancet 2.0 will set out to reaffirm and confirm the evidence needed to solve this for all of us.”

Source. foodnavigator.com