Shifting diets for a sustainable food future
What we eat is rapidly changing around the globe, as people converge toward diets high in calories, protein and animal-based foods. A new WRI paper, Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future, explores these changes and the challenges they pose for food security and a sustainable future. It shows that just small shifts in the choices consumers make can have a huge impact in reducing agriculture’s resource use and mitigating environmental problems—the average American, for example, could cut their diet’s environmental footprint in half just by eating less meat and dairy. To help shift people to more sustainable diets at a large scale, the paper introduces the Shift Wheel, which harnesses marketing and behavior change strategies already used by the food industry to influence consumer purchasing.