This book tells the story of changing patterns of food provision in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. From the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, climate change and inflation, the authors discuss the food system’s winners and losers in a time of rapid social change.

This paper argues that food expenditure patterns of lower-income countries are not adopting diets of affluent countries contrary to the belief that globalisation, income-growth and cultural trends are causing a shift in diet. The researchers analyse food expenditure patterns, including ultra-processed foods, in 90 different countries. 

This article explores the role of trade as a potential driver of inequitable aquatic food distribution through its analysis of global aquatic food consumption patterns, trade characteristics, and impacts from 1976 to 2019. The authors find an increase in per capita consumption of aquatic foods over this time period at the global scale, a reduction in the average consumption rate of foods higher in the aquatic food chain, and improved distribution of high value aquatic foods through structural trade patterns. The authors hope to contribute to future research on the globalisation of aquatic food systems, aquaculture and the impacts of trade on food security.

Using ethnographic research, Valeria Siniscalchi peels back the curtain on the daily goings on of the famous grassroots food movement, Slow Food. The Slow Food organisation was formed in Italy to promote the values of slow, local and traditional food practices based around community values and sustainable environmental practices. Through engaging with the contradictions, complexities and ambiguities of the movement, Valeria shines a light on one of the most high-profile and controversial food movements of the last thirty years.

This paper explores how the agricultural sector in the European Union (EU) might be affected by partial shifts in European consumers’ diets towards the EAT-Lancet reference diet. The impacts vary by sector, with the production of animal-sourced foods likely to fall and production of fruit and vegetables likely to increase. Overall, agricultural income is projected to rise as a result of the dietary shifts.

This report by the Dutch think tank Questionmark examines how Swedish supermarkets encourage the consumption of meat, notably by multi-buy discounts where customers only receive a discount if they buy multiple items. Furthermore, the types of meat that are promoted by the four biggest supermarkets are very rarely (in only 3% of meat promotions) rated “green” (i.e. most sustainable) by the Swedish WWF meat guide (see also the TABLE blog The Swedish Meat Guide – multidisciplinary research that reached society).

This study examines domestic and imported supplies of five micronutrients (vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium and zinc) to the United Kingdom over the period 1961 to 2017, with the aim of assessing how future post-Brexit trade arrangements and also shifts towards plant-based diets might affect the security of the supply of these micronutrients.

The global extent of farmland has peaked and is declining, according to this data visualisation from Our World in Data. The visualisation compares three different sets of data, which disagree on the total extent of agricultural land but which all agree that the peak occurred somewhere between 1990 and 2000. The decline in land use comes from pasture; croplands, on the other hand, are still expanding. In part, the decline in pasture extent is caused by a shift towards intensive grain-fed livestock rearing methods.

This paper sets out 26 research priorities related to improving food environments, nutrition and health in Africa, based on the first Africa Food Environment Research Network Meeting. The research priorities focus broadly on understanding the key drivers of food consumption and acquisition, and on interventions and policies to improve food environments.