In the next section, let’s turn to what we can do about it. Because the problems are immense and it can be overwhelming to think about them. But there’s a lot that can be done both at the policy level, at the individual level, from industry. And we don't really have the luxury of sitting back and just saying, I'm overwhelmed, I can't do anything. There's a lot we can do and I'd like to sort of run through some of what that is. Part of the motivation and the sort of impetus for doing something and part of what puts us in public health in a really prime spot for doing this. Is that there's what's known as co-benefits of addressing the sustainability in food for both public health and for environment. When somebody eats in a more sustainable way, there can be quite substantial impacts on public health. And often the very same eating patterns are benefiting all these different goals. I will say, though, that it's not totally consistent. And so when we make some sort of broad statements like eating local is always better for the environment and always healthier, not necessarily so. And for example, just because something was produced locally doesn't necessarily mean that there's any inherent health qualities about it. Or that it's better for the environment or better for the communities and I'll give you the example. If you have a big processed food plant that's making all kinds of sweet treats right next to where you live. It may be local, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be healthy. Some of the things where there's almost always synergies though are eating less. So, closer to our nutritional needs is almost always going to benefit both nutrition and environment. From an environmental standpoint actually, processed foods, in some cases, are not actually so bad. Like a processed food may have relatively low greenhouse gas emissions compared to a food that takes meat or even vegetables that were produced in a greenhouse or flown to us by air in the middle of the winter, Processed food may have relatively low greenhouse gas emissions. And, in terms of wasted food, the more preservatives that are in that, the less likely it is to be wasted. So that doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to promote that everybody live on Twinkies. But, it's just something to think about that these items don't always coincide. Ultimately we just need to be careful about what we say. Because its complicated in many of these cases, and it depends. So they've done surveys in terms of, so if we want to move more towards sustainability. And interestingly, from one recent survey, 70% of US consumers said that they're willing to change their own consumption habits. If it can help make tomorrow's world a better place to live. So that's really inspiring and really heartening. I will say that that's what people say when you ask them directly, yes, yes, yes, I support this. But when you ask them in context of a number of other reasons why people make decisions about buying food and beverages. In fact, sustainability often comes out at or near the bottom of people's reasons. And here's one example, from a study that looked at that. So what we're seeing here is that sustainability, which is the bar at the very bottom, has a much lower impact on people's decisions on which foods and beverages they buy, compared to taste, price, healthfulness, and convenience. So it's something to think about. People care about it, but it's not necessarily the thing that they think of first. So there's room to make change in that. So the other question is when we start talking about sustainable diets, it's very individual and some would even say it's paternalistic. Who am I to tell you what to eat? And I would just say that some of the reasons why it's really important to talk about sustainable diets and why changing what people eat can make a difference for the entire food system. Is that demand and supply are completely interconnected. So if you change what people want, it changes supply. A few years ago basically no one was eating kale. Kale became popular and now kale is very widely produced. And it also can create food system change in deeper ways, so you have much more of a market for meats without antibiotics, or for grass fed meats, things like that. Another reason why it's important to address demand, is that consumers have very little awareness of the environmental impacts of the foods that we eat. It's not talked about a lot. Part of the reason for that low motivation for sustainability compared to other types of reasons for choosing foods, maybe that people just are not aware. And if you start telling people half of the food related greenhouse gas emissions are coming out of meat and dairy, they'll look at you like you're a little out there. So there's little awareness. There's also little knowledge as I was saying, those foods typically aren't labeled with information that would help consumers make decisions. So there's a real need for giving consumers those kinds of tools. The second main reason why it's valuable to talk about sustainable diets is that this is when people are motivated to do something about it. Here's a real way for people to engage and not everybody can go to corporate headquarters and demand action. But everybody eats at least three times a day and that's a place where they could really make difference and it can lead to support for other actions. And finally, this isn't really only about the individual level when we start talking about diets. What individuals do can have tremendous reach and can change systems. And you see an example of this and I'll talk about this in a few minutes, with the incredible industry opposition that came with talking about sustainability in the dietary guidelines. So the level of concern about telling people what to eat, if the message might be something that a business might consider is not in it's best interested. That level of concern demonstrates that they're pretty concerned about what messages go out. And so that also suggests that we can be too. And I don't mean to say that as we and them with us and industry, because there are many players within industry that are working for positive change. So please don't take that the wrong way. So what are some ways to influence individual behavior change? One of the things is it starts out with there are differences in pre-existing motivation to do something about the environmental impacts of food. And so we have to start where people are. Removing barriers is a key strategy. So we know that often sustainably produced foods may cost more. They may not be available in every place you look. And sometimes it may cost the same, but people in order to change their typical purchasing patterns, may need an additional incentive. So, making things more affordable and accessible is key. Another strategy is what's known as choice editing. So, basically, if you go into a place and there's only certain products on the shelf, you're going to choose from among those products. Somebody's not necessarily going to go to another store to find that relatively unsustainable product. Now people say who has the right to go in and reduce the number of choices that we have available to us? And the counter-argument to that is that our choices are being restricted all the time. And stores, and industry, and institutional food providers, are always making choices about what foods are accessible to us. Another piece is effectively targeting messages. And really, one of the challenges when it comes to food and sustainability, is that we don't really have very good information when you start breaking down the types of who eats what, or who wants what, or what are motivations and drivers. Starting to break that down by geography, demographics, we really have very little of that. And there's a great need for more understanding about how more effectively to target the messages that we have. We need to address cultural norms. And then when it comes to, let's say, if we're going to give out messages, what messages do we focus on? One of the challenges to consider is do we focus on the places where there's the biggest impact? Or do we focus on the places where it's easiest to make change? So for example, when it comes to meat consumption. We could, for example, and one of the things that we can do and is being increasingly done is, mix some mushrooms or some soy into a burger. It's relatively easy to do. It doesn't necessarily affect the taste. Kind low hanging fruit. Or you could have a really big impact by pushing, for example, that everybody substantially reduce their meat consumption to levels needed to really bring us into line with climate targets. And that may have the biggest impact but it's not easy. And lastly, I want to mention that in terms of how do consumers know what's more sustainable. And I've talked about this a lot. That it's confusing and it's complex. And when you want to give the proper message, it can often be quite complex, like well, eat more fruits, but these should be an apple that's seasonal versus berries that are air freighted. It's not just eat more fruits. It gets into our psyche as well and so there's some recent work focused on what the authors have referred to as the negative footprint delusion. So if you ask people what is worse for the environment and you show them a meal with a burger in it and they'll tell you what they think of it. And then if you show them that same meal with a burger and an organic apple. They will estimate that somehow or other that has improved the meal. Not realizing that still there were a lot of resources, additional add on resources, that went into producing that apple. So if you have more things by definition, your footprint would be higher. But it's sort of like, by doing a good thing, we've canceled out the negative thing. So there's a concern that if people take one action that's beneficial for the environment, does that then give them license to do a lot of other things? So we need to dig into the psychology and understand a lot more about how we bring about change in diets. So let's turn to policy. One of the keys goals in policy is shifting incentives just like it is in individual behavior. I’ve titled this slide, policy to level or tip the playing field. What we’re dealing with is that, in many ways, there is not a level playing field. And companies that are larger and that are often producing in relatively unsustainable ways often have a lot of incentives directed in their favor. And they're able to do things that others aren't because of the structural factors in society, whether intentional or not. And so policy can be beneficial for leveling the playing field. But I would argue that we actually want to tip the playing field in favor of the kind of production that we really want to see. And the Farm Bill is in many ways a funding bill. And so there are a lot of places in there where we can shift the incentives to make the environmentally sustainable choice, the affordable and easier choice. We know that companies are basically making profits off of what is known as externalizing the environmental impacts of their production. By making it less affordable to make those kind of profits is another way to level the playing field and addressing monopoly power is another type of regulation. So it's a different type of regulation that can also have an impact. Support for marketing. So there's money there's one possibility to give somebody direct subsidy, but there's other ways to approach this. You can give money that helps market products that are more environmentally sustainable. You can shape governmental dietary messages. You can invest in research and research and development. And finally, although it seems very politically challenging, to put it mildly, in the United States, there is the lever of taxation for foods or products that are relatively unsustainable. Or even a carbon tax that would then play out in terms of food as well. Another type of governmental action is looking at what governmental food services are purchasing through sustainability guidelines or through farm to school programs and so on. Private industry also has an important role to play. And there are many entrepreneurs out there. There's really a proliferation of entrepreneurs out there finding creative and powerful ways to create change. And in many cases there's a need for funds and support to enable them to scale up. Within business, including larger businesses, there's also very many efforts on sustainability. And while some of them could be said to be green washing, or making something sound good for the sake of reporting it. Many of them are authentic and we need to recognize that. And so business is not necessarily good or bad, it just is, there's businesses doing all kinds of things. Now some businesses are changing voluntarily. And sometimes they are doing activities that don't really even have a cost to them to make some of these changes. And sometimes there's a cost and sometimes it's minor. So in the next section, I'm going to talk about dietary guidelines or basically governmental advice on what people should eat. These are put out by many countries. In the United States the dietary guidelines for Americans are published every five years. Basically only 4% of Americans actually meet them. So some would wonder why spend a lot of energy on it. And in addition to the fact that this is the government endorsed recommendation, it also informs the meal content for federal programs or military personnel, for the WIC program, and for the National School Lunch Program. What happened in the 2015-2020 dietary guidelines for Americans. For the first time the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services who are the ones that lead the process. They always convene a committee of experts to review the science in great detail and give recommendations. And for the first time this time, they let the committee that was reviewing science also reviewed the science on sustainability. And that committee came out with a report that in part said, consistent evidence indicates that, in general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods. Such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in animal based foods is more health promoting. And is associated with lesser environmental impact, greenhouse gas emissions, energy, land and water use than is the current average US diet. So this was based on their scientific review of the evidence, and they go on to say that this plays out in terms of long term food security. So that this fits directly within the mandate of the dietary guidelines because it's about long-term nutrition of the population. And that we don't need to only focus on short-term nutrition. So, when this came out, tremendous uproar occurred. And here’s, for example, a page from the New York Daily News with the headline federal panel recommends vegan diet for the first time. And within the caption for the photo it says President Obama is now leaning closer toward a vegan diet. So along with that, there was a tremendous energy that was generated far more than it had ever been generated before on issues. As, in some ways seen by some, as esoteric as the dietary guidelines, 29,000 comments were submitted. And most of them, so a sample was analyzed. And most of them were pro-sustainability. The two places where there's arrows are the two were they may or may not have been about sustainability. So one said lean beef is important for human health and nutrition. So that's the lower arrow and that probably means that those were not necessarily those supporting sustainability in the dietary guidelines. And the other one was basically saying we expect our government to use accurate, science-based information when producing official dietary guidelines. So that kind of statement may, or may not have been put out by opponents who claim that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee of top scientific experts was not using scientific information. It may not have been. So basically, this overwhelming public interest in recognizing that our dietary guidelines really ought to include sustainability when we give our national dietary recommendations. Well, so what happened? So in Congress, the House and Senate both put out agricultural appropriations bills that essentially forbade the official dietary guidelines for Americans that would be based on the report from the expert committee, forbade it from including anything about sustainability. And that was that, and the formal dietary guidelines came out and there was no mention.
