WWF Launches ‘Planet-Based Diets’ - for Human Health and the Future of the Planet

WWF today launches Planet-Based Diets, a new approach to making food choices that can help ensure a healthy planet as well as healthy people. The initiative will offer not just a global framework but also, for the first time, a customized platform which can accelerate the adoption of healthy and sustainable planet-based diets at the national and individual level.

A new report, Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-Based Diets will help individuals and policymakers understand the health and environmental impact of their diets. The Planet-Based Diets Impact & Action Calculator will lay the foundations for better decision-making by measuring the national health and environmental impacts of any diet, customized across 13 food groups, and built on bespoke datasets and analysis for 147 countries. The Calculator will support policymakers in designing more ambitious National Dietary Guidelines (NDGs) and incorporating dietary transition into other policy frameworks, in line with global health, climate and environmental targets.

As recognised at the recent UN Summit on Biodiversity, the climate crisis and destruction of nature, both of which are driven significantly by our food system, leave humanity in a state of planetary emergency. Against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, it’s become more important than ever to adopt healthier and more considered diets. The major drivers of emerging infectious disease, such as COVID-19, have been shown to be the unsustainable conversion of land for agriculture, intensive livestock farming and illegal trade in wildlife, often for consumption. It is necessary to change how we produce and consume food to provide everyone with a healthy and sustainable future.

The report Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-Based Diets found that transitioning to planet-based diets delivers high human health benefits and low environmental impacts, including a more stable climate, less wildlife loss and more space for it to thrive, and, crucially, longer and healthier lives for people.

“Dietary changes take place at the local level, so it was important for us to translate the global agenda into actionable national-level analysis,” said Brent Loken, WWF’s Global Food Lead Scientist and lead author of the report. “There is no one size fits all solution. For instance in some countries there needs to be a significant reduction in the consumption of animal-source foods, while in others there may need to be an increase to tackle burdens of undernutrition. Health and the environment need to be considered together. Our Impact & Action Calculator will help countries to better understand the impacts of dietary shifts, so they can provide all their citizens with diets that are good for both people and the planet.”  

“What we eat indisputably has an impact on our health and the planet. And for the latter we need to change course now to secure nutritious and sustainable diets for future generations. This new report from WWF contributes to the debate with new insights and tools that can inspire and potentially pull both policy and consumers towards more sustainable and healthy diets. It is needed. Globally and locally,” said Mogens Jensen, the Danish Minister for Food, Fisheries and Equal Opportunities. “In Denmark we are launching a new set of Danish Food Based Dietary Guidelines and for the first time they combine knowledge on what is good for both human health and climate. This thinking is well in line with the ongoing Nordic work of developing new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations in 2022. I hope many countries and regions are looking into the same work. We need to address the global challenges by using the transformative power of food.”

In addition to the report and Impact & Action calculator, the Planet-Based Diets platform will provide open source data for 147 countries on the dietary-related impacts of eight human and environmental health indicators; as well as policy recommendations and a collection of deep dives on five strategic actions needed to move from a global food system which exploits the planet to one which restores it for people and nature.

“Failing to change our diets is having dramatic impacts on our health, nature, climate and other aspects of socio-economic development,” said João Campari, Global Leader of WWF's Food Practice. “Food systems are the primary driver of biodiversity loss. In the past 50 years, species populations have declined by an average of 68 percent and food production has caused 70 percent of biodiversity loss on land and 50 percent in freshwater. If we are to achieve food systems which protect nature, while providing everyone with enough nutritious and healthy food, we require an unprecedented level of collaboration to urgently deliver transitions to planet-based diets.”

With next year’s UN Food Systems Summit aiming to catalyse bold new actions and advance the Sustainable Development Goals, WWF is calling for the redesign of National Dietary Guidelines (NDGs), to equate healthy eating with sustainable eating, and implementation of ambitious national food plans. Ahead of the UN Framework to Combat Climate Change and UN Convention on Biological Diversity annual summits in 2021, the Planet-Based Diets platform recommends that diet shifts are integrated into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and the Global Biodiversity Framework.

“We have just nine years, and the last nine harvests, to transform our food system and deliver the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals or face potentially irreversible damage to nature and people,” said Campari. “We need actions across the food system, in production, consumption and food loss and waste. Adopting planet-based diets, which will increase conscious consumption and shift market demands, can accelerate other actions and help achieve sustained change.”