What this community must start, strengthen, or transform to drive change from within.

1. Expand diversity in food offerings and diversify supply chains.

Design menus to offer increased diverse ingredients that are environmentally sustainable and nutritious, including a more blended and nuanced mix of plant- and animal-based food types, recognising that the Planetary Health Diet reflects a dietary pattern framed over days and weeks rather than individual meals. 

Story of Progress: ● Beans on the Menu - Beans is How

2. Leverage procurement to diversify supply chains. 

Increase resilience and mitigate risks, while embracing a diversity of foods (e.g., the “eat your colours” approach) from both global and local suppliers of all scales, including smaller minority-owned suppliers. Support suppliers that value diverse, seasonal, sustainable, and locally produced, and indigenous foods, as well as a diversity in blue food sourcing to increase the resilience of the supply chain. Create demand for regenerative practices.

Stories of Progress: ● Cultivating an Appetite for Seaweed - Chef Frida Ronge ●  Rethinking Workplace Food - UN City in Copenhagen

3. Support sustainable and fair value chains. 

Collaboratively develop strategies and share costs with other value chain partners to improve production standards aligned with environmental, health, and social justice values. Invest a percentage of purchases into farms transitioning to regenerative agriculture. Demand transparent sourcing in contracts throughout the value chain to uphold worker rights and guarantee livable incomes. Integrate fair value chain initiatives with local social justice efforts, such as improving food sovereignty or reducing poverty.

Story of Progress: ●  Wawee Valley Project - Zero Foodprint Asia

4. Leverage food environment design and hospitality experience to guide eater behaviour. 

Recognise that the overall food environment, concept presentation, and hospitality experience all present opportunities to reshape eater attitudes and preferences. Guide eaters towards healthier and more sustainable food choices by offering plant-rich menu items as the default choice. Use enticing and descriptive language to communicate ingredients, and optimise portion sizes to reduce waste.

Stories of Progress:  ● Powerplant Dining Hall - Vanderbilt University ● Delicious Language, Healthier Plates - MCURC

5. Empower your team.

Ensure fair and decent working conditions and incomes for employees. Create programmes and pathways for career advancement. Involve front line staff in menu design and communication to increase engagement with customers. Foster a shared passion for transforming the food sector and food systems among all employees, inspiring collective efforts to reduce food waste and promote healthier, more sustainable, and delicious food choices. 

Stories of Progress:● Foodwise - MCURC ● Repurpose with a Purpose - MCURC ● Catering for Change - Climate Conscious Catering

Other resources:● Playbook for Guiding Diners Toward Plant-Rich Dishes in Food Service

6. Connect eaters with the broader food system.

Help eaters discover how food choices connect to broader sustainability and social justice issues by transforming dining spaces and everyday food experiences into learning opportunities. Ensure staff are well-equipped to support this transformation through training programmes, while exploring creative strategies for actively engaging eaters. This can include integrating experiences into school meal programs, hosting cooking classes to engage with eaters on healthy meal preparation at home, sharing the stories of farmers behind menu ingredients, inspiring through historical and cultural contexts of regional cuisines.

Stories of Progress: ● Food Choice Architecture Approach - Google ●  Swapping Protein in UK Schools - ISS Guckenheimer

7. Create learning networks across businesses of diverse sizes.

Design strategies and develop connections between businesses of all sizes to leverage how companies can support food system transformation and learn from one another. Do not overlook the many single-unit, individual and family-run businesses that form the foundation of the global restaurant and food service sector with greater adaptive capacity to quickly change menus and operations. Through collaboration, impact analysis and technology, share strategies that are effective in these smaller settings, identify what might be brought to scale, and help all operators improve their business outcomes while advancing sustainability and equity across the industry.

8. Set goals and targets aligned with the latest EAT-Lancet Commission and establish related sector-wide standards.

Align indicators and metrics with the EAT-Lancet Commission as a sector-wide guiding star. This includes i) co-developing organisational roadmaps to align operations with food waste reduction targets and the most up-to-date science on healthy diets and sustainable, affordable food choices. These roadmaps could include elements covered in this brief. ii) Implementing harmonised and transparent data standards and collection to credibly and consistently track progress. Together, these initiatives foster sector-wide learning, accountability, and a compelling investment case. 

Stories of Progress: ● #123 Pledge - Leanpath ● The Sourcing Code - Strawberry ● The Workforce Nutrition Alliance Scorecard - Google

Actions currently undertaken by our community that hinder progress towards healthier, more sustainable, and more just food systems and should be stopped or done differently.

1. Stop marketing campaigns that promote outsized portions and encourage unhealthy and unsustainable eating habits. Instead, focus on promoting more sustainable and well-portioned healthy meals. 

2. Stop using volume discounts and other purchasing incentives for unhealthy and unsustainable foods, such as rebates for organisations and oversized combo meals for individual eaters.

3. Stop applying universal requirements intended for large corporations to small producers. Instead, develop flexible sourcing approaches that are inclusive of independent operators leading on healthy, sustainable and just practices.

4. Stop focusing on short-term cost-cutting measures and instead build long-term strategies that safeguard people and the planet.

5. Stop developing menus based on narrow ideas of consumer demand. Instead, lead eaters by proactively expanding delicious menu offerings that include more plant-rich and wholegrain foods, and invest in marketing them to generate demand.

Asks from this community to other communities that are necessary to overcome systemic barriers to action (“lock-ins”), pointing to opportunities for collaboration.

1. National-level policy and practice

a. Update national dietary guidelines with the most up-to-date science, considering both health and sustainability. Clearly communicate these guidelines (see Brazil and Denmark), with an emphasis on alternative protein sources and optimal daily amounts of protein to address protein overconsumption where this is a reality.

b. Regulate on food loss and waste, and modernise food recovery policies towards a reduction in food loss and waste. This includes assessing the impact of existing food safety regulations to address barriers to enhanced circular food systems.

c. Create a “sandbox” for pilot programmes to test and develop new food recovery technologies and companion policies.

d. Raise production standards beyond certification: mandate natural resource protection, human rights, including decent work, with penalties for violations.

e. Create eater incentives for healthy and sustainable purchases, such as removing or lowering taxes on fruits, nuts, vegetables, and legumes; regulate marketing of food in public spaces.

2. City-level policy and practice

a. Utilise city-level policy to impact procurement. Develop procurement standards on healthy and sustainable food menus at scale and across food service communities. Collaborate with partners to establish city-wide procurement policies that build demand, such as requiring institutional food service (e.g., school and hospital meals), purchased lunches, or conference meals to comply with the Planetary Health Diet.

b. Implement measures to reduce food loss and waste at the municipal level, such as increasing the availability of composting bins, and developing circular economy plans for regions and sectors within and adjacent to the city.

c. Host pilot programmes of cross-sector collaboration to demonstrate financial, social, and environmental sustainability potential.

3. Research

a. Provide context-specific information on effective nudges and interventions that work with different population segments (e.g., age groups, geographic locations).

b. Develop and test measurement tools to make the financial and business case for dietary shifts. Provide clear results to show the financial impact of procurement changes towards more plant-rich menus.

c. Continue strategic agenda-setting to update the community with best practices and deliver the most recent science support.

4. Value chain business collaboration

a. Encourage more inclusive collaboration across the food value chain (e.g., distributors and manufacturers) by supporting engagement with local SMEs that promote healthy, sustainable, and just food systems.

b. Co-develop sector-wide full value-chain pre-competitive standards to align strategies on healthy and sustainable diets, regenerative production, livable wages, and food loss and waste. These standards can serve as a roadmap to unify business goals, and ensure all partners across the value-chain shape procurement practices and supplier engagement.

c. Highlight examples of food loss and waste valorisation efforts from start-up companies to enable scaling or adaptation for local contexts.

d. Support campaigns that challenge the status quo and enable change in demand-side perceptions of healthy diets mobilising popular culture, influencers, and campaigners among others.

e. Finance farming practice transitions (towards regenerative agriculture) through grants, blended finance and crop insurance, also unlocking procurement and sourcing transitions.

5. Scientific community and healthcare professionals

a. Promote “food as medicine” and “culinary medicine” to strengthen the link between the science of health and environmental imperatives, and the language of deliciousness that shapes restaurant and food service customer choices. 

b. Continue to train healthcare professionals in food as medicine, nutrition, and lifestyle medicine to improve public health and environmental aims.