Food sustainability leaders call for ‘basket-level transformation’

Sustainability leaders in the food sector argue that companies’ work on healthy diets and sustainability should be integrated in order to drive systemic change in a new white paper.

Climate change is no longer a future risk for the food industry: extreme weather events already cost EU farmers €28 billion a year, and investors in the sector have been warned that their climate-related losses could reach US$38 trillion by 2050. But the sustainable transformation of the food system is facing enormous economic and cultural hurdles.

In a white paper published today (June 25) during London Climate Action Week, 10 leaders in food industry sustainability – including Anna Turrell, former CSO of Decathlon and sustainability director of Tesco, Caroline Orfila Jenkins, VP of Science and Technology at Oatly and Daniella Vega, Global Senior VP Health and Sustainability at Ahold Delhaize – argue that the best way to overcome these challenges is to leverage the intersection between human and planetary health.

“Diets that protect the planet also promote human wellbeing. Yet today, these two crucial aspects of a better food system are often run separately by many food companies. By integrating them into one approach – a healthy and sustainable diet – we create a mutually reinforcing narrative for both people working within the food system and people consuming food,” they write in the white paper – an initiative of Planeatry Alliance.

Benefits of the ‘basket-led approach’

Poor diets have surpassed smoking as a leading cause of preventable deaths worldwide, and are costing health systems billions of dollars. In the UK, fewer than 1% of people currently meet basic healthy dietary recommendations, and the average diet produces 4.84 kg of CO2e per person every day – more than double the IPCC emissions targets of 2.04 kg.

The basket-led approach – focusing on meals and grocery baskets instead of individual items – is, the sustainability leaders argue, “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the future of food”, driving choices that are both healthier and more sustainable.

To make this a reality and overcome mindset gaps, operational limits, policy and market barriers, they identify 10 solutions to build the foundations, implement change on a day-to-day basis and enable system change.

Building the business case for healthy and sustainable diets

In the short term, organisations can use the very real climate threat to business to make the case for transformation and resilience. This will also make it easier for them to respond to changing consumer preferences, particularly towards more plant-based diets. Targets around healthy sales or a plant-animal protein split (such as the one announced by Ahold Delhaize) are powerful levers.

Companies should also leverage new technologies such as AI, geospatial sensing and digital twins to get the data they need to support the transformation, and focus on building skills and capacity internally.

Beyond individual product improvements

Retailers including Ahold Delhaize and Tesco have started moving beyond individual improvements to focus on whole baskets, recognising that consumers naturally think in terms of shopping trips.

Tesco, for example, measures how many healthy sales result from the basket. “We see a really strong uptick in healthy sales and as an internal policy it’s been really useful to have quite clear criteria of what can be included and what’s not. The key is to be appealing and tasty and inspiring. That’s been the big focus of both our internal product development team, and then also our supply base,” notes Alice Ritchie, Head of Healthy and Sustainable Diets at Tesco.