New major scientific update
EAT-Lancet 2025: Global food transformation needed to ease pressure on the planet and save millions of lives
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Axfoundation has developed a Nordic two-day menu inspired by the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, illustrating how Swedes can eat sustainably — close to today’s habits, yet in balance with the planet. Picture by Axfoundation.
Five of the seven breached planetary boundaries are linked to food systems. By transforming production and adopting a “planetary health diet,” we can halve food-related climate emissions and prevent millions of deaths, according to the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission.
The new EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Food Systems has been developed by an international team of researchers in areas such as nutrition, climate, health, economics, and agriculture. Several Centre researchers have contributed to the commission and played a central role in the work.
The report sets scientific targets for healthy diets, food’s impact on planetary boundaries, and outlines the foundation for a just food system – and shows how far different parts of the world are from these targets.
“EAT-Lancet 2025 places justice at the centre, not only as a goal but also as a vital part of enabling transformation,” says Centre Director Line Gordon, one of the report’s lead authors.
Other contributing Centre researchers include Anne Charlotte Bunge, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Costanza Conti, Amar Laila, Isabel Baudish and Johan Rockström.
Compared to the 2019 report, the new EAT-Lancet Commission now:
• Updates the planetary health diet, showing it could halve the food sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and prevent up to 15 million deaths annually.
• Maps the food system’s impact on all nine planetary boundaries, finding it drives five of the seven already transgressed.
• Identifies social foundations needed to realise rights to food, a healthy environment, decent work, and agency, which 3.7 billion people lack today.
• Just 30% of the population is responsible for more than 70% of food’s environmental impact.
Figure showing how much global food systems contribute to pressures on all nine planetary boundaries. The green circle represents the safe operating space, the red line marks the safe limits for food systems, and the dotted black wedges show the share of each boundary’s pressure caused by food systems. The image showcases that food systems are a major driver of boundary transgressions such as climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, nutrient cycles, and pollution.
A diet for the planet
The planetary health diet recommended by the commission means that people around the world should eat more whole grains, legumes, fruit, vegetables, and nuts, while reducing animal products, especially red meat.
“You could call this a flexitarian diet. It is rich in plant-based foods, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, but also contains some animal products,” says Line Gordon.
The diet can be adapted to local conditions, and the commission is developing materials to show what this could look like in different regions.
If everyone is to follow the planetary health diet, some types of production must increase while others must decrease. The commission’s modelling shows that global legume production would need to increase by up to 190 %, vegetable production by 42–48 %, while animal production would have to decrease by 22–27 %.
Major benefits
The proposed global food system transformation could deliver major gains for health, ecosystems, and climate resilience – benefits valued at more than ten times the required investments, according to the Commission.
“Transforming the food system is an investment that reduces future costs and strengthens our societies. It is especially important to review investments and support systems for farmers so that they are not left alone to bear the costs of transformation,” says Line Gordon.
Centre researcher Johan Rockström, one of three Commission co-chairs and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), emphasizes that the report shows more clearly than ever before how we can feed a growing population within planetary boundaries:
“By uniting the latest science on health and climate, it shows that what we put on our plates can save millions of lives, cut billions of tonnes of emissions, halt the loss of biodiversity, and create a fairer food system,” he explains.
Achieving such a transformation will require swift political decisions, changes in eating habits, and global financial incentives that support fair and sustainable systems.
“To drive progress, we need bold political leadership, proactive businesses, and a growing public demand for change,” adds Centre researcher Anne Charlotte Bunge, newly graduated PhD researcher and co-author of the report.
The way forward
For the way forward, the commission stresses everyone’s right to healthy food and calls for policies that make the planetary health diet accessible and affordable, such as subsidies, taxes on unhealthy foods, and restrictions on marketing. It also highlights the need to preserve traditional diets, invest in sustainable farming, and cut food waste. Protecting marginalized groups and ensuring decisions serve the public good, not private interests, will require broad collaboration across governments, business, and civil society.
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