Advocating for policies and actions for a healthy and sustainable diets in the Irish Context

Sean Owens, John Allman

Keywords: Sustainable, Diet, Planetary, Prevention

Introduction:

The food system we have today was created with the primary aim of avoiding mass starvation in a booming global population. However as the “green revolution” of exponential food production has grown to meet global demand for food, there has been a concurrent rise in diet-related chronic diseases, morbidity and mortality including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. The triple burden of pandemics - obesity, climate change and malnutrition - are all interrelated in a global ‘syndemic’ that shares common underlying societal and political drivers, for example, powerful commercial engineering of food overconsumption, weak political governance systems and unchallenged pursuit of economic growth. The Irish Climate and Health Alliance is made up of a range of medical, health and social care professional organisations and believes that every person in Ireland, irrespective of the place or socioeconomic circumstances they live in, has a right to a life free from avoidable death, from malnutrition and from diet-related chronic diseases caused by their food environment.

Method:

The presentation will demonstrate the need for a food system transition for the benefit of human health, planetary health and equality. It will discuss the 6 major challenge areas that must be addressed to adequately transform our food system.

Results:

The six challenge areas that must be addressed are as follows. 1- ending the junk food cycle. 2- Promoting the transition to a plant based diet. 3- Harnessing the power of international and national guidelines. 4- Reducing food waste. 5- Improving agricultural practices and land use 6- Utilizing policy to affect behavior change.

Conclusions:

In this presentation, the Climate and Health Alliance presents two sets of recommendations. The first set serves to inform individuals who wish to make individual-level dietary changes towards a healthier, more sustainable diet, and also to inform future updates to the Irish food-based dietary guidelines.

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