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ONLINE VERSIONThe Food System Economics Commission is anindependent academic commission that equips
political and economic decision makers with toolsand evidence to shift food and land use systems.

POLICY BRIEF 4

The Dietary ShiftEat as if it will save people, societies
and the planet — because it will.

SUMMARY

Patterns of how and where people meet and eat have evolved to provide fast, cheap
food that relies on a harmful transnational industrial food system. This trend has
implications for health, resilience and agricultural sustainability. Dietary change iscrucial to reverse the global impact on health, longevity, and the environment.
FSEC modelling emphasizes that fostering a healthy food environment is biophysicallyfeasible and the most powerful strategy to improve human and planetary well-being.

BACKGROUND

KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Ensuring everyone has access to a healthy diet is oneof the most crucial ways to reduce risk of long-term
illness and premature death, with diet-related illnesses
claiming 8 million lives annually and constituting about
13% of global DALYs in 2019.1 Dietary decisions not only
impact individual health but also have far-reaching
implications for the planet. The major drivers of unhealthy
consumption vary in intensity across and within countries.
However, common factors include food environmentswith low availability, affordability and convenience of
healthy food, pervasive marketing of unhealthy foods,
problematic food environments and behaviors -- manyof which are not controllable by individuals -- that lead toexcessive consumption, and low knowledge/awarenessof food content and risks in some populations.

Global change is needed to ensure that people everywhere
have physical, economic, and social access to a healthy,safe, and culturally suitable diet. To operationalize theshift to healthy diets, FSEC modelling reflects all countries
gradually adopting by 2050 a healthy reference diet as
defined by the EAT-Lancet Commission, emphasizing
increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts,
soybeans, and legumes, and reduced intake of sugar,
vegetable oils, red meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy. Thismeans higher consumption of fruits, vegetables and nutsin South and Southeast Asia’s highly populous regions
and higher consumption of legumes in China. Shifting
to a healthier diet also means reducing consumptionof animal-source foods, such as meat and dairy, in all
regions except sub-Saharan Africa, where increasing meat
consumption could make diets healthier, particularly
in terms of containing adequate micronutrients. The
FSEC analyses show that a healthy diet is economicallybeneficial and biophysically feasible on a global scale.

Unhealthy diets take various forms, from nutrientpoor diets causing hunger and micronutrient deficiencies,
particularly affecting populations in lower-income
countries, to those high in fats, sugars, and salt and low
in wholegrains, fruit and vegetables which lead to noncommunicable diseases affecting people worldwide.
The hidden costs of diet-related non-communicablediseases currently amount to USD 11 trillion inlost productivity, while obesity-related medical
costs are expected to reach USD 3 trillion by
2030. The costs of undernutrition add another
USD 3 trillion according to the World Bank.
In addition to these impacts, prevailing dietary
patterns drive land use expansion. While animal-sourced
products constitute a relatively modest albeit important
share of total calorie and protein intake, they occupy over
80% of accessible agricultural land. Ruminant-derived
products significantly contribute to GHG emissions andenvironmental degradation, surpassing the impact ofplant-based products. Production of resource-intensive
foods — which predominate many diets, especially inhigh-income regions — contributes to a third of global
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with consumption
alone accounting for 18% of CO2 equivalent emissions
in 2019. Increasing demand for animal-sourced foods
requires more agricultural land, often expanding into
critical ecosystems and resulting in habitat destruction
and deforestation. This, in turn, exacerbates further
loss of biodiversity and soil degradation. In addition,
70% of available freshwater and over one third ofearth’s landmass is used by the agriculture sector.

1

While respecting differences in agroecologicalzones, culture, and dietary preferences, the food systemtransformation must focus on shifts to healthy diets.
In so doing, the transformation could reduce chronic
diseases and nutrient deficiencies and lead to gains
in healthy life spans across the globe. These changes
could cut the majority of costs related to diet-related
non-communicable diseases, eliminate undernutrition,and save 174 million lives by 2050. Failure to alter current
dietary patterns jeopardizes the 1.5°C target and poses athreat to the environment. Embracing the Food System
Transformation pathway proposed by FSEC will not only
reduce pressure on land, but will also lead to significant
reductions in GHG emissions from the food system.
Additionally, it contributes to positive environmental
outcomes, including preserving habitats, land regeneration
for carbon sequestration, safeguarding freshwater sources,
and mitigating nitrogen pollution (Figure A – diet impacts).
Fortunately, these conditions are changeable witha systemic and coordinated plan using incentives
and regulation, innovation, and investment – thethree policy categories identified by FSEC.

DALYs are disability-adjusted life years which quantify the years of life spent with disability or lost to premature death.

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KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS (CONT’D)
Incentives and regulations→ Among the most effective actions to incentivize
healthy diets is harmonized taxation of unhealthy
foods and beverages. More than 120 countries impose
taxes on unhealthy foods and sugary beverages,
with at least some evidence of benefits, ranging fromincreased revenue to reductions in child obesity.
→ Another incentive-based strategy is to reallocate
agricultural subsidies away from production types
that pose both health and environmental risks (e.g.
palm oil, excessive animal-based foods) and towards
promoting healthier food options. Currently, themajority of agricultural support tends to favour
larger producers and is associated with negativeenvironmental and health impacts. By redirecting
subsidies towards the cultivation of nutritious, fibrerich and protein-rich crops such as fruits, vegetables
and nuts, we can increase their supply, reduce prices
and improve the accessibility and affordability ofhealthy foods for all. Subsidies for fruits and vegetables,nuts, and legumes have shown a potential returnon investment of more than 200:1 in Mexico.
→ Using government purchasing power to choose healthy
foods for institutions such as schools and hospitals.
Healthy food procurement programs have beensuccessful in increasing availability of nutritious food,
while green public procurement initiatives, like Sweden’sorganic food goal, and local purchasing mandates inschool catering programs show potential for positive
impacts on the environment, economy, and nutrition.
→ Other proven actions that government can take areregulation of marketing, including front-of-packagelabeling on unhealthy food and beverages. Protectionof exposed populations (e.g. children and youths)
against advertisement of unhealthy food by government
regulations is another promising tool supporting
the shift towards healthy diets. These actions have
led to consumption changes in many countries.
Innovation→ Innovation by producers is necessary to offer consumers
healthier choices. One proven approach is productreformulation to reduce salt, sugar, and/or fat in many
foods. Initial examples demonstrate the feasibilityof this—though more R&D is needed for large-scale
impact. Regulations to eliminate industrial trans-fatty
acids—produced during the hardening of vegetable oils
and leading to cardiovascular disease—in numerous

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countries are a health success story. Similarly, saltcontent in foods can be reduced stepwise, withconsumers progressively adjusting to a different taste.
Another opportunity is the support of sustainable
alternative proteins, such as fermentation-derived
microbial proteins or other meat substitutes.
→ Producers can also develop new products – withand without policy encouragement. Developing anddisseminating biofortified orange-flesh sweet potatoes isa case study of how innovation and investment combine
to provide a healthy and culturally appropriate productat a scale that can help reduce vitamin A deficiency inAfrica. National and international public institutions
can speed up the development and diffusion of suchinnovations—and ensure that they meet the needsof lower-income food producers and consumers.
Investment→ A third pillar of this strategy is investment ininfrastructure (physical infrastructures such as
roads and electricity, digital services, property
rights, market infrastructure, business development
services, skills development and extension services)to support innovation, market development andproduction of healthy food, leading to affordable
and accessible healthy diets for all, everywhere.
In addition to these well understood interventions
which need to be scaled up and enforced, otherpolicy and industry changes need to be tried andtested before they can be recommended.
Ambitious actions that need more evidence include:→ Use the purchasing power of public procurement
to grow the market for new healthy foods, such as
nutritious alternatives to animal-source foods.
→ Use market-based measures to change production
systems in industrial food production e.g. introduce
emission pricing schemes in agriculture.
Yet individual policies alone will achieve only minorchanges: a comprehensive, bundled package of actions
is needed for maximum effect. For example, modellingfrom FSEC shows that revenue from a tax on processedfoods could subsidize fruit and vegetable consumption
while creating no net budget impact and providing jobs for
agricultural workers. This policy bundling produces benefits
in all regions. An alternative option in land-abundantareas is a GHG tax; this would both lessen this driver ofclimate change and increase healthy food consumption.