Six years after the final EAT-Lancet Fee advised us that we would have liked to halve meat consumption and eat extra complete grains, they’ve produced a brand new report. Discover out why it doesn’t stack up and why we shouldn’t comply.
By Rob Verkerk PhD, founder, government & scientific director. Edited for ANH-USA by Michael Ames-Sikora. Learn the unique at ANH Worldwide
THE TOPLINE
- Dietary suggestions for EAT-Lancet 2025 barely shift from 2019—largely re-labels and rounding. It nonetheless pushes a one-size-fits-all “planetary” food regimen that sidelines regenerative agriculture, bio-individuality, cultural range, and metabolic wants
- The report leans on modelling and associative epidemiology whereas downplaying real-world proof, nutrient density, and dangers of dietary inadequacies (e.g., sodium and animal-sourced meals)
- The brand new PHD index is a coverage device that may be tied to procurement, pointers, ESG scoring—and probably even taxes or penalties—shifting food regimen from private option to compliance metrics
- Regenerative, seasonal, regional and culturally rooted diets—measured by actual well being outcomes (metabolic markers, nutrient sufficiency, resilience) reasonably than top-down indices—supply a more practical, moral path to human and planetary well being.
For these of us who imagine that meals is drugs, selecting what to eat is without doubt one of the most necessary well being choices we make daily. However relating to “skilled” food regimen recommendation, there’s numerous unhealthy data on the market—particularly when that recommendation conveniently serves company or political pursuits. The most recent instance comes from the EAT-Lancet Fee, whose new report, EAT-Lancet 2.0, as soon as once more claims to have discovered the “common” system for saving each individuals and the planet. However beneath the lofty language lies the identical outdated issues: centralized management, company affect, and a one-size-fits-all food regimen that ignores biology, tradition, and customary sense.
A few of you might keep in mind that when the EAT-Lancet Fee got here out with its Planetary Well being Food regimen again in 2019 (‘Meals within the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Fee on wholesome diets from sustainable meals techniques’), we lambasted its efforts.
As quickly because the 2019 report was revealed, I labored feverishly to know the place EAT-Lancet was going, given my background spanning each well being and agricultural sustainability. The tip product was what I nonetheless imagine could have been not solely the primary, but in addition essentially the most complete rebuttal of EAT-Lancet’s one-size suits all strategy. I argued the EAT-Lancet Fee’s strategy failed on almost each depend: nutritionally, scientifically, socially, and environmentally.
The one tick within the field I’d have been completely happy to test for EAT-Lancet 1.0 was that it was a main instance of desk-based science unrelated to the actual world that serves to propagate a selected narrative: on this case, that ruminant livestock are the last word scourge, and that the mainstream local weather change narrative is unassailable and an important challenge of our time. By the way, this is identical line of considering that’s behind the push to get us all consuming lab-grown meat and synbio meals.
Clearly in recognition of a minimum of a number of of the EAT-Lancet 1.0 shortfalls, the EAT-Lancet Fee has seen match to challenge model 2.0.
What’s new in EAT-Lancet 2.0?
We had been notably scathing in regards to the unique report’s lack of dietary flexibility, and with a modicum of applause, we welcome EAT-Lancet 2.0’s shift from a single “common food regimen” to a extra explicitly versatile planetary well being food regimen (PHD) inside ranges. They’ve additionally upgraded their modelling strategy to create a PHD adherence index. Sure, a mechanism to evaluate compliance, initially at nationwide and regional ranges. However who’s to say this couldn’t be the precursor to the monitoring of people and even a mechanism to impose further taxes or restrictions on people primarily based on their diploma of compliance or non-compliance?
The Fee claims model 2.0 delivers bigger well being beneficial properties and an improved international carbon footprint, whereas providing extra nuance on animal-source meals (system-specific dangers, circularity). With an audible sigh of reduction, we will inform you that the authors have a minimum of accepted that ultra-processed meals (UPFs) are problematic they usually rightly advocate for minimally processed meals. The difficulty is that their obsession with complete grains as staples continues with no obvious recognition of the difficulty this causes with overuse of herbicides like glyphosate, simplification of agro-ecosystems by means of monoculture and soil erosion, to not point out the continued publicity of billions of people who’re delicate to, or illiberal of, gluten-containing grains that play havoc with their guts, microbiomes and immune techniques.
Our 2019 issues included:
- one-size-doesn’t-fit-all (e.g., lack of cultural sensitivity, there have been no choices for regional ‘tailoring’)
- continued demonization of livestock farming with out ample scientific foundation
- over-reliance on proof from industrialized farming techniques
- dangers of dietary inadequacies
- coverage overreach
- impacts on agricultural livelihoods (particularly smallholders), and
- failure to acknowledge environmental advantages of regenerative or agro-ecological farming
Sadly, model 2.0 has performed little to alter any of those massive points. Sure, there are some changes which might be in the proper course, however in lots of key areas there is no such thing as a substantive change.
The 2025 replace retains the identical underlying imaginative and prescient as its predecessor: a radical transformation of world meals techniques to feed an anticipated 9.6 billion individuals by mid-century, whereas selling human and planetary well being.
The “Planetary Well being Food regimen” (PHD)—grain-heavy, plant-dominant, low in animal-source meals—stays the centerpiece of model 2.0. Its underlying message stays the identical: halve international meat consumption, double plant-based meals consumption, and halve meals loss and waste.
We’re all in on this final level, however relating to the primary two, we’d be lots happier in the event that they’d agreed to halve industrially farmed meat consumption and improve consumption of non-grain primarily based plant meals. It’s simply not a part of the globalist plan.
Conflicts of curiosity: Flora Energy
In 2019 we highlighted transparency points round funding and institutional affiliations, notably between The Lancet, the EAT Discussion board, and the Wellcome Belief. In 2025, Flora Meals Group (sure, of margarine fame) has grow to be one of many foremost companions to the EAT Discussion board, casting additional doubts over the course of the venture.
Flora is the Dutch firm that was spun out of Unilever’s ultra-processed vegetable unfold division which was acquired by the non-public fairness agency KKR in 2018. The corporate owns manufacturers like Flora, Becel + ProActiv, Blue Band, Nation Crock, Rama and Violife. These questions—unaddressed in 2019—stay unresolved in 2025, casting continued doubt on the objectivity of the science (Actual ScienceTM) introduced.
Ungrounded justice
The proposal that nationwide governments right inequities in food-related human rights, when half the world’s inhabitants lacks the means to fulfill primary dietary wants, is politically, economically, and culturally unrealistic. Attempt telling a Maasai herdsman he’s bought to do away with his cattle to save lots of each the planet and his group’s well being.
The decision for a 33% international discount in livestock to chop methane emissions, paired with a 63% rise in fruit, vegetable, and nut manufacturing, overlooks essential regional realities. Regenerative grass-based livestock techniques, whether or not on the pastures of Wales, Eire, Scotland or New Zealand, or the grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa, are among the many most sustainable on the planet—but they’re dismissed in favor of uniform dietary prescriptions. This dangers destabilizing native economies, centralizing energy within the arms of Large Ag and Large Gov, and eroding meals sovereignty.
Web-zero dogma
The proposed “net-zero meals system” by means of sustainable intensification and carbon sequestration depends on unprecedented ranges of funding and international coordination—circumstances that will decimate nearly each conventional smallholder regenerative farming system.
Whereas the newly modeled eventualities recommend a 20% emissions discount by means of mixed actions (dietary shifts, waste discount, productiveness beneficial properties), these outcomes assume ultimate compliance and ideal governance. Inform us how this can occur with out very tight surveillance. Aaah….enter the new-fangled PHD index that may very well be simply the device to drive international compliance.
Aspirations With out Economics
The trail to planetary and human well being lies not in a one-size-fits-all food regimen, however in numerous, domestically tailored, clear, and participatory and regenerative techniques of meals and well being—techniques that empower individuals reasonably than prescribe to them.
Till EAT-Lancet engages with that actuality, its “win-win” appears extra like a propaganda effort designed to welcome within the type of globalization template dreamed up by the UN with its Sustainable Improvement Objectives.
They’re not what they appear (see right here, right here and right here).
Within the pursuits of human and planetary well being, sovereignty and decentralized energy, please flow into this text extensively.