Eating sustainably – what does it mean?

How we choose to eat is driven by several factors including our personal preferences; social, ethical and economic influences; and our growing knowledge about nutrition. Eating sustainably involves all of us adapting how we continue to eat in order to sustain our health, the health of future generations and the health of our planet. It is about balancing the most acceptable dietary choices against the optimal use of resources. This means that sustainable eating patterns can vary, depending on where we are in the world.

A sustainable diet

Sustainable diets are commonly considered as eating patterns that simply focus on reducing climate change; however, they encompass much more than this and could not be ‘sustainable’ if they focused on this issue alone. As the name suggests, sustainable diets must be something we can maintain in the long term. Therefore, they should be1:

1. Nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy 2. Culturally acceptable and accessible 3. Economically fair and affordable 4. Environmentally protective (respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems)

The emphasis on each of these pillars needs to be adjusted so that there is harmony between them e.g. an environmentally friendly diet will not be feasible if it lacks adequate nutrition and vice versa. As figure 1 suggests, balancing each one in relation to the other, supports sustainability.

Figure 1: The components of a sustainable diet1

1 FAO and WHO. 2019. Sustainable healthy diets – Guiding principles. Rome.

Nutrition & You

Eating Sustainably