Healthy diets do not necessarily have a low environmental impact

It is preferable to eat local food than to restrict ourselves to vegetable-only diets

Melanie Leech
The Guardian, Tuesday 15 December 2009

Your article was correct to say that the Sustainable Development Commission's efforts to define a healthy, low-environmental-impact diet would be seen as an "assault on the UK's current food system" (Eat less meat and dairy: official recipe to help health of consumers – and the planet, 11 December). But their study contained flawed logic and a narrow focus.
You reported that the commission's research provided the "first official recommendations for a diet that is both healthy and good for the environment". And readers were told: "British consumers must cut down on meat and dairy produce, reduce their intake of processed foods and curb waste."
Not so. Other government advisers – such as Defra's council of food policy advisers – have acknowledged that there will never be one clearcut answer in this debate. There will always have to be hard tradeoffs that reflect the personal preferences, incomes and cultures of our varied population groups.
And don't be fooled by the headline: a diet that is healthy will not necessarily be low-impact. For instance, vegetables grown in UK greenhouses may have a high carbon footprint; but then vegetables grown elsewhere may have a damaging water footprint. Which is more important for the environment? And what do we want to do: encourage consumers to eat more vegetables, or encourage them to eat only UK field-grown, seasonal vegetables? These questions clearly represent different sets of challenges, choices and tradeoffs for government, for the food chain and for consumers.
And while we look at ways of encouraging consumers to eat healthily, while minimising their impact on the planet, we still have to find ways to ensure that eating remains a pleasurable experience.
Perhaps the report's biggest flaw is that it assumes Britain can address these issues as if we existed in isolation from the rest of the world – and from the potential global impacts of climate and demographic change, environmental degradation and future shortages of fossil fuels and water.
With the world population set to balloon to 9 billion, what should we be doing to maintain the UK's food security? If we try to stop the production of meat and dairy in the UK, we run the risk of externalising our environmental impacts in the short term (as imports increase), as well as undermining our ability to respond to long-term changes in food production and sourcing. After all, in the UK, keeping cattle and sheep on land that can't support any other form of cropping is surely a good use of a valuable resource.
Food and drink companies recognise their responsibility to engage with efforts to reduce the food chain's carbon footprint, and to cut unnecessary waste. Only this week, members of our federation announced that they had reduced their carbon emissions by 19% since 1990.
The commission's report is not "the first coherent advice on a sustainable diet". It's a recipe for disaster – and fails to understand the nature of the challenge or the importance of the UK food chain in an increasingly uncertain world.