10 October 2025

Headlines aside, what else did we learn from the EAT-Lancet 2.0 launch in Stockholm? 

👱🏻‍♀️ Jez’s thoughts…

📣  📖  How we tell this story is critical 

1. ‘Good communication is a strategy for change’ – and the EAT-Lancet Commission knows it. The report could have been read by only a few academics and policy nerds. Instead, compelling communication (written and in-person) helped make the first EAT-Lancet iteration in 2019 one of the most cited academic reports of all time, and exploded food system change into national conversations across the globe. Its second report, published last week, was covered in the world’s media 2,000+ times within a couple of days. Why does this chatter matter? Because it helps encourage governments, companies, international organisations and other decision makers into action – and feel empowered to do so. Plus, it helps everyone working on food system change to feel connected, heard and to keep going! (That first line on strategy is borrowed from Jack A BoBo, who has been working with the Commission – more on him below).
2. “How we communicate determines if people work with us to solve problems or if they work against us” – Jack A BoBo. The stories we tell determine the future we get: It’s not just about how we tell stories, but about what those stories are – i.e. the narratives we use, the way we frame situations. Narratives are so important that the conference’s closing message was dedicated to it. This was led by Jack A BoBo, who advises governments, multinationals, and NGOs to better communicate on food, and works to reduce polarisation. Jack’s message was that current narratives on food and climate change are not working: More than anything we need collaboration to solve today’s big problems, but polarisation and misinformation are pushing people apart. Stories about huge problems don’t scare people into action, they create a sense of doom and apathy in some, and outrage in others – this drives people apart, and we are particularly good at this with the stories we tell in food. We must be careful about this.
3. What we need to do is inspire people and make them feel that change is possible – historical context can help with this, said Jack. When you look at how far we’ve come, it’s incredible – the UK’s emissions have seen deep cuts in 20 years, and 200 years ago the world was poorer and less healthy. “So in fact, we need to tell people that ‘things are good and getting better, but not fast enough’,” said Jack. “This is an invitation to work together. When I tell farmers ‘things are bad and getting worse’, that’s like telling them that they’re the problem. But when I tell them ‘things are good and getting better but not fast enough’, they’ll say ‘I’ve got a long list of things that could help us move faster’.  How we communicate matters – it determines if people work with us to solve problems or if they work against us,” said Jack.
4. We need to get this story right, because the next 25 years “are the most critical in the history of agriculture”, continue Jack. After 2050, population drops off, so it actually isn’t about producing more and more food forever, “it’s about getting to 2050 without screwing things up! We need to get there without cutting down our forests and draining our aquifers because, in many ways, we could then be good forever”. This won’t happen without collaboration. “When you speak to people, don’t ask them to sacrifice for the future, ask them to embrace it – the future could be and will be amazing if we work together”, said Jack. For more on this, read this LinkedIn post by Jack, following the conference.
5. Justice is at the heart of the story we can tell: “Justice is the word at the centre of this report,” said the Commissioners when opening the conference, before going on to say that ill-health caused by the food system is a central matter of justice. When I play around with justice as part of the story, I think it can resonate with most people – accessing healthy food, living in a place that the food system hasn’t polluted or degraded, and being fairly paid – are all a matter of food justice and impact the majority of people in some form or another, wherever they are. Indeed, the EAT-Lancet report found that only 1% of the world’s population is eating within planetary boundaries and living above social foundations! The inclusion of justice in the report marks a sea change from the first report in 2019 and is the result of a much more diverse set of Commissioners. Shout out to my UEA colleague Nitya Rao, who I know was instrumental in pushing for justice to be embedded across the whole report, along with other commissioners too. Read more from Nitya and her team here. I also think a more diverse Commission added legitimacy, unity, and buy-in: It helped create more connections across cultures at the conference, meant delegates could learn from best practices around the world, and created a sense of global collaboration (that word again!).
6. Emotion, creativity and the arts can reach people where numbers don’t. This was not a dull talking shop! One of the most impactful sessions I took part in was an immersive experience of two future scenarios – one depicting a family in the near future in which we don’t change the food system, and one where we do. This made the reality of what we are facing personal, relatable and emotional. More generally, the conference brought the topic alive and created a sense of unity, urgency and action through music, video, theatre, food, culinary diversity and imagination. I particularly enjoyed how the commissioners were introduced almost like rock stars! You might not like this, but all of these things made delegates feel something – and around 90-95% of our decisions and behaviours are shaped by the emotional brain. To get a sense of what I mean, you can watch the opening of the report in Stockholm here, although so much more happened off the main stage.

👩🏻‍🍳 🍱 Chefs might save the world 

1. We need to talk more about flavour and gastronomy in food system transformation: Flavour is the number one reason that drives people’s food choices, so if vegetables, pulses, and fruit etc are prepared in a way that makes them delicious, people are more likely to eat them. Boiled-to-oblivion broccoli is not going to cut it, no matter how much you legislate. That’s why the EAT-Lancet Commission includes a gastronomic work programme, has chefs and gastronomic influencers on its board, and why one of the three event stages was a kitchen. I spent a good deal of my time there. Again, this is about story telling, inspiration, and a better vision of the future – rather than solely one of apocalyptic food deserts. More from EAT about gastronomy’s potential to create environmental change.
2. Chefs are therefore critical to making transformation possible: A lot of cultures, particularly in the global north, rely on animal-based foods to give flavour to food (e.g. butter, meat, cheese, cream), sugar, or salt – getting away from this will be critical, and chefs skills are needed. This is also why spices are so important in creating the change. I’d recommend checking out the Chef’s Manifesto – thousands of chefs globally who have signed up to help transform the food system. We have more than 300 chefs in the UK signed up to this – let’s make use of their skills! A great example of up-skilling chefs for healthy and sustainable dishes, is the Culinary Institute of America, who we heard from. Check out their Menus of Change academic research project.
3. The UK has rich and diverse culinary knowledge – this is a huge asset. We’ll need these skills – and as I heard in Stockholm, people who are more used to different cuisines (such as younger generations) are more open to trying new flavours and dishes (i.e more plant rich). This must surely make the UK particularly open to different foods. I’m reminded of one of my favourite restaurants in Norwich – Namaste – an Indian restaurant serving up extraordinary flavours. It is always rammed and has quickly become a city favourite. It just happens to be vegetarian, but I very much doubt the punters are thinking about this, or even notice.
4. We need to stop labelling food and people, e.g. as vegetarian or vegan. Going back to the points above from Jack A Bobo, dividing food (and people) in this way is unhelpful. It polarises, and if you’re not won over by veggie food, labelling it so isn’t going to swing you. Food is food. If it’s tasty and good people will eat it. Instead talk more about the flavours and textures. The PHD diet is more of a flexitarian diet, adaptable to different people and contexts.
5. This isn’t about removing choice – it’s about expanding it! We heard from chefs and a catering company about how cooking with more plants had increased the diversity of what they work with, in search of different flavours. For them this was about making more use of the whole range of what is available. Again, framing matters.

🥦 Other bits and pieces

1. Cities are leading change faster than national governments: We heard from many mayors, and other city authorities who were leading change faster and deeper than their national governments. This included Quezon, a city in the Phillipines, which is supporting 1,400 small farms around the city, and has introduced seed banks, healthy public food procurement and mandatory calorie displays for hospitality. Around 40,000 tonnes of food waste has been recovered and turned into compost, and then returned to the farms. Local authorities must invest at least 1% of their budget in healthy foods.
2. How can we adapt examples of change to the UK’s own socio-economic values? In the French city of Montpellier, school meals are healthy and supplied by regenerative farms. This costs the state about €12 per meal (!), with a further €1-2 paid for by families. A far cry from the UK’s school meals budget. Speaking to the Montpellier representative, she suggested that this level of cost would be totally unpalatable in a UK or US setting because of our different socio-economic values – and that it was down to how to work within our own context. You can read the case study.
3. Can we model benefits to society, rather than just emissions? This goes back to storytelling and the need for a vision of the future. A conference speaker (from the insurance sector), raised the question of whether we could model beneficial outcomes of food system change, e.g. how would making free school meals healthy and available to all impact educational outcomes, or mental health? ​​​​​​​

👱🏻‍♀️ Ali’s thoughts…

• 🍎 Convergence has arrived. In Stockholm, the tone was strikingly different from 2019, less debate about the “what,” far more focus on the “how.” Governments, scientists, and business leaders are aligning around a single truth: the food system is the decisive lever for human and planetary stability.
• 🥕 The science has strengthened. The 2025 Commission strengthened the science. By assessing food across all nine planetary boundaries, the evidence now shows unequivocally that food drives five transgressions, and the dietary analysis takes into account more countries and populations- giving more scientific certainty about direction of travel.
• 🥝 Health is an entry point for food systems change. The Planetary Health Diet has evolved and is a systems framework. Its regional modelling proves it can work across cultures and populations, making it a tool for policy design, not just academic debate.
• 🫘 Justice is now an organising principle. The Commission’s biggest evolution is people as much as scientific. In every session, equity dominated – from farmers’ livelihoods to citizens’ access. The message was clear: without fairness, there is no legitimacy in transition.
• 🍉 Economics is catching up with ethics. The $5 trillion annual benefit of food systems transformation was cited again and again, a language business and finance finally understand. The shift from moral imperative to market logic is underway.
• 🥬 Regeneration has gone mainstream. “Ecological intensification” – or regen ag – once niche, is now central to global dialogue. From soil health to nutrient cycling, the narrative has moved from extraction to restoration, with food positioned as a regenerative force.
• 🇸🇪 Stockholm felt like a pivot point. The science is settled, the solutions exist — what’s missing is coordination. The opportunity now lies in connecting health, environment, and justice agendas into one coherent policy and investment strategy for the decade ahead.

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