This systematic review assesses the evidence base of the environmental and health impacts of novel plant-based foods (NPBFs) as compared to animal-based foods (ABFs) in food secure, high-income countries. NPBFs are defined by the researchers as new food products designed to mimic and replace ABFs and be added into habitual diets; examples include vegan meat or plant-based dairy. The researchers find that generally, NPBFs have better health outcomes and better environmental outcomes compared to ABFs. These results, however, vary by product type and context and they warn that caution should be given in the development of dietary guidelines. The authors suggest future research and policy should seek to develop more granular categories of NPBFs that account for these complex and often contextual health and environmental issues.

This review article focuses on the practical implications for livestock farmers and their pastures of a shift towards a plant-based diet in the UK. The authors argue that the majority of pastures are unsuitable for conversion to arable land because of their soil type, making them unreliable sites for plant-based protein production.

This report, written by Jenny Chapman from the Churchill Fellowship, a UK fellowship programme which supports innovation across multiple fields and sectors, details concerns surrounding plant-based meat being “ultra-processed”. The author highlights how the “ultra-processed food” category, designed to identify if a food has been made in a factory or not, is being incorrectly used in nutrition science circles and has been used to suggest that all plant-based meat products are unhealthy.

No Meat Required chronicles the history of vegan politics and practise in the United States and asks whether the original political motivations of the movement have been lost to corporate commodification. The book follows veganism from its roots in the hippy movement, its revival with growing concerns over the climate emergency and its integration into contemporary supermarket retailing, fine dining and junk food products.

This paper calculates the carbon footprints and dietary quality score of six dietary patterns based on consumption data from the United States: vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, keto, paleo and omnivorous diets. All of these diets were loosely defined (e.g. vegetarian diets are those with less than 14 grams of meat and seafood per day) to allow some deviation from the strict conventional definitions of these diets. Pescatarian diets scored as the most healthy, and vegan diets had the lowest carbon footprint.

This policy brief from Climate Advisers and the Good Food Institute suggests that alternative proteins (both plant-based and cultivated, i.e. lab-grown, options) are important for food security around the world and national security in the United States. It argues that feeding edible crops to livestock drives up the price of staple crops, negatively affects the quantity of food available to people, and makes food reliant on long, fragile supply chains (e.g. at risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks).