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The Eat-Lancet Commission has today (3 October 2025) released its new Report on Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Food Systems, outlining a roadmap toward a healthier and more sustainable planet.

It builds on Eat-Lancet’s earlier 2019 report, which presented the Planetary Health Diet as a dietary framework designed to encourage healthy diets that ensure nutritional adequacy while also reducing environmental impact.

The Commission’s new report provides an update, stating that the global context has ‘shifted dramatically’ since the 2019 publication due to factors like the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring food prices amid increasing geopolitical instability.

According to the Commission – which comprises a team of experts in nutrition, climate, economics, health, social sciences and agriculture, from more than 35 countries across six continents – shifting global diets could prevent approximately 15 million premature deaths each year.

Food systems transformation

Transformation of food systems will be vital, the report emphasises, stating that food systems are the largest contributor to the transgression of five planetary boundaries, contributing around 30% of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

The planetary boundaries framework defines nine key system processes that regulate life on Earth, with six of these boundaries already being passed: climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, and novel entities (pesticides, antimicrobials and microplastics).

Food system change will be essential to achieving improved health and social development outcomes, the Commission said. The report found that fewer than 1% of the world’s population is currently in the ‘safe and just space,’ where people’s rights and food needs are met within planetary boundaries.

According to the report, 32% of food systems workers currently earn below a living wage. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 30% of people drive more than 70% of food-related environmental impacts, and despite global calorie sufficiency, more than 1 billion people remain undernourished.

Even with a complete global transition away from fossil fuels, the analysis warns that food systems could push temperatures beyond 1.5°C.

Johan Rockström, co-chair of the Eat-Lancet Commission and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the report sets out the “clearest guidance yet for feeding a growing population” without breaching the planetary boundaries.

He commented: “It also exposes the stark winners and losers in today’s food systems, where entrenched power dynamics drive deep inequities. By uniting the latest science on health and climate, it shows that what we put on our plates can save millions of lives, cut billions of tonnes of emissions, halt the loss of biodiversity and create a fairer food system.”

The Commission states that investment in the range of $200-500 billion will be required to drive global food systems change. However, it highlights analysis suggesting that reshaping systems could deliver $5 trillion annually through better health, restored ecosystems and climate resilience.

It calls for urgent policy action, dietary consumption transformation and a realignment of global financial incentives to achieve these goals.

As part of the Commission’s work, 13 independent modelling groups assessed the potential impacts of food systems change on five of the planetary boundaries: climate, land, freshwater, nutrients pollution and novel entities.

The analysis integrates diverse datasets, including diet and health outcomes, into a unified framework designed to create a ‘safe and just’ future for 9.6 billion people globally by 2050. This includes areas such as healthier diet adoption, reduced food loss and waste, and improved production practices to reduce environmental pressure.

Dietary changes

Across all regions, the analysis shows that diets consistently lack sufficient fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and whole grains. It also finds that diets in many regions contain excess meat, dairy, animal fats, sugar and highly processed foods.

The 2025 Commission report continues to emphasise a plant-rich diet, with optional, moderate amounts of animal-sourced foods and limited added sugars, saturated fats and salt. The dietary targets aim to provide a global reference point that can guide food system policy while encouraging healthier diets.

It recommends a significant decrease in meat consumption – 0-200g maximum (or one serving) of red meat per week, 0-400g for poultry, and 0-700g of fish.

A report from the Food Foundation stated that UK adults consume around 93g of meat each day on average, while almost a third of the meat UK consumers eat is processed. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Agricultural Outlook for 2025-2034 projects a 6% increase in global per capita consumption of animal-sourced foods by 2034.

Walter C Willett, Commission co-chair and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said: “The Commission’s findings reinforce that the Planetary Health Diet is good for both people and the planet. By increasing the production and consumption of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, we can improve health outcomes everywhere while respecting cultural and regional traditions.”

Recommendations

Willett added that diets are “just one part of the picture,” highlighting eight solutions the Commission sets out in its report as a “practical roadmap to unlock transformation at scale”.

These recommendations are:

• Protect and promote traditional healthy diets

• Create accessible and affordable food environments that increase demand for healthy diets

• Implement sustainable production practices that store carbon, create habitat and improve water quality and availability

• Halt agricultural conversion of intact ecosystems

• Reduce food loss and waste

• Secure decent working conditions across the food system

• Ensure meaningful voice and representation for food systems workers

• Recognise and protect marginalised groups

The report emphasises the need for a fairer distribution of resources, benefits and costs to build the social foundations that enable people’s right to food, decent work and a healthy environment.

Each potential solution highlighted is supported by actions identified by the Commission as critical for transforming food systems, such as integrating traditional, healthy foods into dietary guidelines; supporting local seed systems; using food loss and waste; and improving agroecological practices to conserve ecosystems.

It also calls for subsidising reforms that make healthy and nutritious foods more accessible, and for regulatory and advocacy mechanisms that support decent work and meaningful representation for food

systems workers.

Plant-based food awareness organisation ProVeg International welcomed the Commission’s focus on plant-rich diets, but CEO Jasmijn de Boo warned that implantation of the Planetary Health Diet will require policymakers, business and society to work collaboratively.

A study supported by ProVeg, published last week in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society journal, evaluated food-based dietary guidelines from 100 countries, and found that most countries are still primarily promoting the consumption of animal-sourced foods.

“Whilst we warmly welcome the latest update to the Planetary Health Diet, it is clear there is still much work to be done to ensure countries incorporate the recommendations of this diet into their national dietary guidelines together with an effective implementation strategy,” said de Boo.