September 5, 2024 — What’s not to like about this? Swiss food scientists have devised a process for making chocolate that is more planet friendly and requires less added sugar. If you ever felt guilt about enjoying a little bit of chocolate, let it go. Less Waste The main thing here is crop waste. Typically, most of the cocoa […]
April 10, 2024 — More sustainable and healthy diets are a global goal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO says the need for this focus is increasingly evident, but certainly not simple to achieve. Nutrition recommendations around the world are beginning to incorporate these considerations, they say. “Such recommendations include for example: having a mostly […]
March 24, 2024 — The ideas that float freely into discourse about food policy can be fascinating. The latest in this line of intoxicating concepts is python meat. A new analysis in Scientific Reports tells us it tastes like chicken, but it’s sustainable. “Reptile meat is not unlike chicken: high in protein, low in saturated fats, and with widespread […]
February 19, 2024 — Global food systems are a slow-rolling disaster, gaining momentum, and costing the global economy $15 trillion per year. That’s the bad news from a new policy report of the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC). The good news is that we have options, they report, which could produce economic and health benefits adding up to as […]
September 28, 2023 — “Conjecture is good, but knowing is better.” This bit of wisdom from the Indiana University School of Public Health came to mind yesterday at the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences. The subject of the day was the relationship between culture and obesity – really quite a fascinating subject. Four […]
October 27, 2022 — Most of us who think about food systems have a vague sense that our diet has a meaningful impact on the health of the planet. Beef is typically thought to be a bad actor. Eating more plant based foods should help. But an ambitious new study in Nature Sustainability aims to assign specific numbers to […]
October 21, 2022 — Among the many interesting presentations from three days of focus on causes of obesity, a just-so story stands out. We heard a number of just-so stories this week – untested fables to explain how we came to have so much obesity. They fit neatly with with an agenda that calls for a discussion of conjectures. […]
September 20, 2022 — Global food systems are putting more food – and more nutritious food – within within the reach of more people than ever before. But what are the outcomes for human and environmental health? For nutrition and equity? Frankly it’s a mixed picture. Food systems have evolved all over the world to crank out sufficient calories […]
November 7, 2021 — Can we get a two-for-one deal on dietary and planetary health, please? The news has been full of dispatches from the climate summit in Scotland this week. Some folks are frustrated by too much talk and too little action. The costs of a warming planet are mounting. So the University of South Australia has a […]
October 11, 2021 — As rationalizations go, imagining huge health benefits from eating more plant-based diets is not terrible. Trisha Pasricha writes in the Washington Post that pneumonia, diverticulitis, diabetes, and cancers are linked to regularly eating meat. She even points to a study of COVID and plant-based diets to illustrate how beneficial such diets might be: “In a […]
