As London Climate Action Week highlights food’s critical role in building climate resilience, the contradiction facing our food system has never been clearer.
Sue Pritchard, CEO of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, put it well when she described the food system as “a kind of paradoxical story”.
“On the one hand, it looks just fine. We’ve got more choice, we’ve got more opportunity, we’ve got more availability than ever in human history,” she said last month. “And yet at the same time, we’re seeing a growing burden on people, on the planet, and on the public purse.”
The numbers tell the story: food systems generate one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and poor diets have surpassed smoking as a leading cause of preventable death, costing the UK £67.5bn in healthcare annually. Fewer than 1% of UK consumers meet basic dietary recommendations that are proven to be more sustainable.
Health & sustainability
To unearth what actually works to deliver healthy sustainable diets, we interviewed 10 senior food system leaders from Tesco, Eat, Ahold Delhaize, the Climate Change Committee and elsewhere for our report published today.
The fundamental problem? Health and sustainability are still tackled as separate reputational issues rather than interconnected commercial opportunities. Current approaches remain tactical rather than transformational, fragmented rather than co-ordinated, and supply chain-focused rather than marketplace-led.
The most innovative leaders we spoke to are moving beyond individual product improvements to “basket-level transformation”. That means optimising entire baskets – a practical pathway whereby abstract goals like carbon reduction become what people actually buy and eat.
Our conversations revealed 10 integrated pathways to deliver healthy sustainable diets, spanning foundation-building (creating compelling business cases, leveraging data technologies, building capabilities), day-to-day execution (connecting to product mindsets, adopting basket-first approaches, aligning food environments), and system change (strategic portfolio evolution, agricultural transformation, policy engagement).
Protein diversification is leading commercial transformation. Lidl GB leads as the only UK retailer with specific plant-based protein targets (25% by 2030), while Ahold Delhaize aims for 50% plant-based sales across Europe.
Sustainability integration is happening across organisations. “We know very clearly we cannot deliver transformative change on our own. The most effective leaders integrate sustainability strategies right across the organisation,” Anna Turrell, global sustainability leader, told us.
Policy transformation is accelerating. “Since the publication of the 2019 Eat-Lancet Commission, we’ve seen the C40 Good Food Cities Declaration, where nearly 20 major cities committed to aligning public procurement with the principles of the Planetary Health Diet,” Dr Gunhild Anker Stordalen, co-founder and executive chair of Eat, told us. “That’s millions of meals every day building a ‘whole basket’ approach that changes entire food environments.”
The commercial reality
Forward-thinking organisations see healthy and sustainable diets as shaping commercial relevance, resilience, cost base, access to finance, and future liabilities. The logic is compelling. Today’s global food system hides a $15tn annual price tag in health and social damage – more than the industry’s total value creation. While these costs remain largely invisible to today’s pricing, consumer awareness is rising, and two-thirds now seek healthier, more sustainable diets.
Companies adopting integrated approaches position themselves ahead of regulatory intervention while capturing expanding market segments. The leaders we spoke to stressed that individual action, however innovative, isn’t enough.
Food’s prominence at London Climate Action Week signals recognition that system change needs a co-ordinated response. And the convergence of health and sustainability through basket-level transformation represents a scalable opportunity to reshape food systems.
The question isn’t whether to act, but how quickly the rest of the sector can capture the advantages that early movers are already realising.
Mike Barry and Ali Morpeth, co-founders of Planeatry Alliance
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