A new policy briefing endorsed by 25 health and sustainability organizations has called for the procurement of food for UK public institutions to be aligned with healthy, sustainable diets.
The briefing makes three key recommendations for the UK government:
- Reform the Eatwell dietary guidelines to factor in sustainability, informed by models such as the EAT-Lancet diet.
- Mandate food buying standards, including ensuring average meal emissions fall below a certain limit and removing requirements for high-emission foods to be available (for example, meat must currently be served three times per week in schools). The briefing also recommends prioritising plant-based whole foods to reduce emissions and setting limits on foods that are harmful to health, such as red and processed meat.
- Providing adequate funding to ensure a right-to-food approach. This would involve extending free school meals to all children and providing increased funding for local authorities and the NHS to procure healthy, sustainable food.
Making sustainable meals more abundant
The briefing estimates that a shift to healthier meal options could save the NHS £54.9 million per year, based on data from New York hospitals that offer plant-based meals as the default option. Furthermore, the changes could improve health outcomes, resulting in further savings for the NHS.
Last October, a campaign called Plants First Healthcare, led by senior NHS doctors, called on UK hospitals to offer plant-based meals by default to benefit human and planetary health. Additionally, a factsheet published last year by Coller Animal Law Forum and the Humane League outlined how sustainable and humane public procurement policies could steer the food system away from intensive animal agriculture.
The organisations that have endorsed the new policy briefing include Feedback, Sustain, Doctors’ Association UK, School Food Matters, ProVeg, and more.
“Currently high-emissions meat and dairy is the default meal option, often making it difficult to choose anything else – our schools and hospitals can make healthy sustainable meals more abundant, without taking away any freedom of choice,” said Martin Bowman, senior campaigns manager at Feedback. “We also need universal free school meals to ensure no child goes hungry in one of the richest countries in the world.”
