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Plating Up Progress: New Investor Briefing

Plating Up Progress, a project run jointly by the FCRN and the Food Foundation, has launched its second report proposing metrics for assessing progress towards healthy and sustainable food. 

The briefing focuses on the risks and opportunities food retailers, caterers and restaurants are facing regarding urgent health and sustainability issues. Sitting at the end of the supply chain as they do, they are potentially at the sharp end of regulatory or market-driven changes that affect food supply, prices and demand for new products. They’re also the channel through which most commercially produced food is funnelled, so are the best indicators for whether meaningful shifts are taking place in food industry.

Plating Up Progress demonstrates that investors can identify opportunities and avoid risks by understanding how far food businesses are prepared for the transition to sustainable and healthy food, and puts forward the necessary metrics for assessing progress.

The Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) conducts, synthesises, and communicates research on food sustainability.

We inform and connect stakeholders with a common interest in building sustainable food systems.

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What's new

  • Featured report: Grazed and Confused? It is safe to say that the debate over grass-fed meat has left people either polarised or confused. Is grass-fed better or is it worse for the climate? What’s actually true?

  • New Foodsource building block: What is ultra-processed food? And why do people disagree about its utility as a concept? The consumption of ultra-processed foods has been associated with various medical conditions and has been argued to undermine social and environmental sustainability. The term is gaining traction and is central to several dietary guidelines. Critics, however, say the concept is ill-defined, adds little detail to existing knowledge on food and dietary health, and is ultimately biased by an implicit prejudice against ‘Big Food’. This building block explores the concept of ultra-processed food. It investigates the arguments that opponents and proponents use, and the scientific evidence they bring forward, to support their viewpoints.

  • Plating Up Progress: New Investor Briefing Plating Up Progress, a project run jointly by the FCRN and the Food Foundation, has launched a second report proposing metrics for assessing progress towards healthy and sustainable food. 

  • New blog post by Kelly Reed and Philippa Ryan: How can looking to the past help deliver a sustainable food future?

    In this blog post, Kelly Reed and Philippa Ryan explore how archaeological and anthropological research can contribute to discussions on how we transform our food system. They describe the history of some agricultural practices that could contribute to current and future food system resilience, including sediment traps, crop diversification and ancient local crop varieties.

  • In Fodder this week: The UK’s National Farmers Union has set out its plans for making agriculture in England and Wales net zero by 2040 via approaches that include improved production efficiency, carbon capture through land management, and bioenergy. Meanwhile, the Food Research Collaboration has published two new Brexit briefing papers: one on the impact of a no-deal Brexit on food flows across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and one on whether food standards in the UK are likely to be lowered as a result of post-Brexit trade deals.

  • Featured FCRN publication: Appetite for Change: social, economic and environmental transformations in China’s food system This 2014 FCRN report provides a detailed and integrative analysis of the dramatic changes in China’s food system over the last 35 years, and explores the emerging linkages among the environmental, health, economic and cultural trends.