SYKE advocates Nat´l green food policy

Increasing the proportion of vegetables, legumes, and fish in the diet helps ease climate change, eutrophication of the Baltic Sea and inland waters, and the decline of biodiversity, said the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) in a policy brief on Monday.

The policy brief emphasises that national nutrition recommendations must take both nutritional and ecological sustainability into account.

The publication is directed at those who are drafting food policies, as well as decision-makers.

Nordic nutrition recommendations are currently being updated.

“We need to start developing environmental criteria for nutrition recommendations also in Finland,” said SYKE Head of Unit Jani Salminen.

Environmental criteria must be based on collaboratively generated, comparable scientific methods and on open public data.

In Finland public food services are pioneers in the promotion of sustainable eating. More than 380 million meals are consumed each year in day-care centres, schools, and educational institutions. Also on the private side, businesses may require adherence to nutrition guidelines in their staff cafeterias.

Kitchens in schools and early education, and student cafeterias are guided by current nutritional recommendations to always have a vegetarian option available for all. Fresh vegetables and fruit should be included at snack time. Municipalities have also been encouraged to make public procurements of food from responsible sources.

“Including environmental criteria in nutritional recommendations would create a common basis for work on behalf of sustainable nutrition”, said Minna Kaljonen, a leading researcher at SYKE.

However, adding vegetarian food to the menus will not help, if the food is not eaten. “Pupils and children will need to be heard more in the development of new, environmentally friendly recipes”, Kaljonen observes. “Food served at schools and day-care centres is a key part of food education offered in schools and day-care centres.”

A diet that is environmentally sustainable includes more vegetables and fish than is currently the case, and correspondingly less products derived from domesticated animals, such as beef, pork, and dairy products. At best, an ecologically and nutritionally sustainable diet go hand in hand.

The average annual per capita consumption of domestic wild fish is about 6.5 kilograms. ”The sustainable use of wild fish could be increased many times over,” said SYKE Senior Research Scientist Seppo Knuuttila.

In addition to fish, the more varied use of vegetables, and especially legumes, is recommended both from an environmental and a nutritional standpoint.

The SYKE policy brief states that adopting a sustainable diet does not happen only by affecting what we eat or consume. A comprehensive change in food policy is needed – also in Finland.