Global malnutrition – in all its forms – remains one of the world’s most pressing challenges. Unhealthy diets and malnutrition are among the top 10 risk factors contributing to the global burden of disease. More than 10% of the global population is affected by hunger – approximately 735 million people live with food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition due to a lack of access to adequate food and more than 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet – while more than 2 billion people worldwide are overweight or obese. It’s clear that the world needs to rapidly shift towards adequate, accessible, nutritious and sustainable diets.
Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) have been used for many years by countries to inform consumers about healthy dietary patterns. Their effectiveness has been questioned, but their potential role to help transform food systems towards better nutrition and environmental sustainability is evident. To concretize this untapped potential, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) developed a new methodology for food systems-based dietary guidelines (FSBDGs). This aims to address both health and nutritional priorities and takes a food system approach to promote healthy diets, by considering socio-cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability.
Dietary guidelines – implemented at global, national and sub-national levels – are a key policy tool for promoting positive changes among food system actors, including towards the adoption of more sustainable diets among consumers. When it comes to nutrition, people need trustworthy, authoritative guidelines that cut through the often erroneous, conflicting and ever-changing dietary advice in the media and online. Dietary guidelines, such as national-level FSBDGs, aim to provide evidence-based, context-specific recommendations and can form the basis of public dietary education. These guidelines also serve as a guide to inform policies across the entire food system, including agricultural, distribution, trade, processing, marketing, retail and taxation policies.
Adopting a system approach for developing dietary guidelines provides multiple benefits such as promoting healthy food that can also help advancing toward nature and climate goals. The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission Report suggests that shifting to global diets could prevent up to 15 million premature deaths a year and lead to a 15% reduction in agricultural emissions. FBDGs have huge potential to promote relevant dietary habits, thus delivering both environmental and health benefits. Data suggest that aligning dietary habits with existing FBDGs could reduce GHG emissions by approximately 13% and premature mortality by 15%. Their positive climate impact could even be tripled, by strengthening how FBDGs take environmental sustainability into account. Guidelines promoting biodiverse diets based on local and traditional foods play a crucial role in preserving native plant and animal species, and their genetic diversity in agricultural landscapes.
To effectively introduce food-based dietary guidelines and increase consumption of healthy and sustainable foods, policymakers can consider:
- Reviewing existing dietary guidelines:
- Raise the ambition of National Dietary Guidelines (NDGs) to establish alignment with global environmental and health goals, place shared responsibility for updating existing NDGs with the Ministries of Health, Agriculture, and Environment, and make certain that an independent scientific body develops the updated NDGs.
- Assess if these guidelines adequately address all aspects of food systems (including health, environment and socio-economic impacts of diets) and are based on local contexts, and that policymakers across government actually utilize them to inform policy decisions. Policies and programs should incorporate behavioural insights from the target communities.
- Guidelines should be aligned with reputable, science-based sources such as:
- FAO and WHO Guiding Principles on Sustainable Healthy Diets
- European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) dietary reference values
- WHO guidelines on macronutrient intake to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain and diet-related noncommunicable diseases
- Codex Alimentarius Commission international food standards
- In integrating a food systems approach to existing guidelines, follow the FAO iterative approach.
- Develop and adopt food-systems based dietary guidelines by following the below stepwise approach based on FAO’s methodology:
- Design and plan national process:
- Set-up the organizational structure.
- Establish the technical task team and develop a work plan.
- Analyse the situation and review the evidence:
- Define the scope and modality.
- Conduct a targeted policy and program review.
- Describe and prioritize major nutrition, health and sustainability issues.
- Review evidence on relationships between diet and health, and other sustainability outcomes.
- Describe diets and set preliminary goals and targets.
- Conduct a targeted analysis along the food system and revise goals/targets.
- Review evidence on effective interventions across the food system.
- Draft and review the Situation Analysis and Evidence Report.
- Develop recommended dietary patterns and formulate the technical recommendations:
- Carry out diet modelling and refine diet goals/targets.
- Formulate multi-level technical recommendations covering diets and enabling food systems intervention.
- Validate, revise and finalize the technical recommendations.
- Develop the national implementation strategy:
- Prepare for the development of the implementation strategy.
- Consult stakeholders for strategy development.
- Validate, revise and finalize the implementation strategy.
- Design communication and capacity development actions:
- Organize the process.
- Agree on the targets.
- Design communication and capacity development products.
- Develop a workplan for rollout.
- Implement, monitor and evaluate:
- Endorse and launch.
- Operationalize the national governance structure for implementation.
- Develop and execute sectoral implementation plans.
- Carry out continuous capacity development.
- Monitor, evaluate and improve.
- Design and plan national process:
- Include socioeconomic considerations (based on principles of ecological economics) and equity when designing guidelines to account for feasibility of their implementation based on the local context, including the following factors:
- Food prices and diet costs
- Profitability
- Wealth/profit distribution and power imbalances across the food system
- Safe, decent employment opportunities with livable wages
- Safety net programs
- Focus on implementation from inception by considering potential organizational capacities, barriers and enablers for implementing the food system-based dietary guidelines.
- Ensure a participatory process for the development of guidelines while managing any conflicts of interest, as well as power imbalances, among stakeholders. This process should involve consultations and working groups that include representatives of various stakeholder groups, including those listed above. Stakeholder engagement in the policy development process is essential, particularly so that the framework can best be adapted to the local context and to resolve trade-offs between aspects of healthy eating, nutrition and environmental sustainability. This engagement process must be inclusive, transparent, and equitable to ensure that stakeholders trust the recommendations, with particular emphasis on ensuring the participation of low income, marginalized, and food insecure groups.
- Use food labels, advertising campaigns, and other means to widely communicate accurate, standardized and easy-to-understand information about dietary choices. For food and nutrition labelling, consider schemes for diverse science and evidence-based Front of the Package labelling (FOPL) that could include informative and interpretive labelling, while considering the Codex Alimentarius Commission guidelines, standards, and recommendations and other relevant standards to inform consumer choices about food. See Regulating advertising of unhealthy and unsustainable food and Regulating food quality and safety.
- Expand guidelines’ target audiences. In addition to consumers, nutritionists and health practitioners, guidelines should also target other actors relevant to food systems such as policymakers, program designers/implementers, teachers, social workers, food service organizations, manufacturers, the media and agricultural extension workers.
- Align all the national food systems-related policies and programs with FSBDGs. Identify policy instruments that can be expanded in terms of coverage, strengthened in terms of capacity and funding, and better aligned with the goal of promoting equitable, healthy, sustainable diets for all. Particular emphasis should be placed on supporting low income, marginalized, and food insecure populations. Examples of instruments include income transfer programs (e.g. social protection schemes, cash transfers via safety nets and employment guarantee schemes), business promotion initiatives (e.g. extending rural finance, tax incentives for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the food sector and enhanced canteen meal projects) or agricultural extension programs which also support community-level health messaging and public food procurement policies. See also Improving equitable access to healthy and sustainable foods, Strengthening inclusive multi-stakeholder approaches in food governance, and Integrate healthy and sustainable diets in public procurement.
- Integrate biodiversity for nutrition and health in tandem with climate adaptation and mitigation measures to further maximize the potential health and biodiversity benefits associated with promoting the use of nutrient-rich foods.
- Establish monitoring and evaluation systems to assess the effectiveness of dietary guidelines in promoting health and conserving biodiversity. Focus on continuous development, surveillance, and monitoring of targets to validate outcomes related to biodiversity and nutrition.
Governance measures that build institutional capacity are necessary to enable the adoption of FSBDGs. Such measures can include the following:
- Link dietary guidelines to broader food system policies and interventions related to food production, supply chains, health and nutrition, food culture, food marketing/advertising and other food systems components. Similar synergies can be realized with other interventions such as those included in Regulating advertising of unhealthy and unsustainable food.
- Design fair food environments – from exposition to consumption and disposal – to enable consumers to more easily implement sustainable, healthy diets.
- Diversify food production to improve diets. Simultaneously, invest in undervalued crops and cropping systems, notably underproduced crops that underpin dietary health and Indigenous cropping and knowledge systems. See Implementing nature-positive food production practices.
- Repurpose public and private financing to support farmers that produce or support public goods, including the production of healthy foods, clean water, and habitats for biodiversity.
- See other enabling conditions under Improving equitable access to healthy and sustainable foods.
Some key tools and guides to support the successful integration of FSBDGs can include:
Tools
European Commission Green Public Procurement Toolkit
Set of resources and guidelines designed to help public authorities incorporate environmental criteria into their procurement processes. It aims to reduce the environmental impact of goods, services, and works purchased by government entities throughout their life cycle.
FAO Framework for Action on Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture
The Framework was endorsed by the FAO Council in 2021. It contains more than 50 individual actions grouped into three strategic priority areas: characterization, assessment and monitoring; management (sustainable use and conservation); and institutional frameworks.
Guides
FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries
These guidelines aim to enhance food security, contribute to equitable development of fishing communities, achieve sustainable resource utilization, and promote the sector’s role in a sustainable future. They cover both marine and inland fisheries, emphasizing human rights, equality, and participatory governance.
UNEP Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) Implementation Guidelines
Resource designed to assist policymakers, experts, and consultants in developing and implementing SPP policies. These guidelines offer a step-by-step approach for establishing and strengthening long-term SPP practices. They include guidance on policy design and implementation, best practices, case studies, and a revised methodology incorporating lessons learned from various SPP projects.
The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Food Systems
The Commission presents new evidence-based insights on nutrition and human health within safe and just planetary boundaries. New to this Commission are updates to the planetary health diet, the measurement and assessment of the impact that food systems have in driving transgressions of planetary boundaries, an exploration of multi-dimensional and underlying issues of food justice, new research and extensive modelling insights, and transformative and action-based recommendations and roadmaps.
Introducing FSBDGs and increasing the consumption of healthy and sustainable foods can also help advance the targets of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), as well as those of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Climate change mitigation benefits
FSBDGs can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production and supply chains. For example:
- Guidelines focussed on dietary shifts, such as encouraging more plant-based diets, can help address emissions related to livestock production activities.
- Recommendations on sustainable supply chains, such as eating organic, seasonal local and less packaged foods can address a variety of emissions related to food production, transport and other pre- and post-production processes. This can include emissions from:
- Production and application of fertilizers, including through freshwater eutrophication and soil acidification.
- Land-use change and degradation of carbon sinks due to agricultural production, through deforestation, biomass fires and the like.
Climate change adaptation benefits
Introducing FSBDGs can contribute to the following targets under the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience:
- Targets 9a and 9d (Water & Sanitation and Ecosystems): FSBDGs can help combat climate-induced water scarcity, promote access to safe potable water, and increase the climate resilience of ecosystems by improving their health. This is through promoting sustainable diets based on agroecological practices that:
- Protect biodiversity and ecosystem services
- Reduce water pollution, groundwater protection and other forms of pollution, including GHG emissions
- Reduce pressure on water and land resources, including by reducing land-use change and land degradation.
See also Implementing nature-positive food production practices.
- Target 9b (Food and Agriculture): A dietary shift to diverse food sources can promote diversity in agricultural production and discourage monoculture farming. This can increase farm resilience to climate change-related crop failures and enhance food security.
- Target 9c (Health): A lower risk of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases (e.g. colorectal cancer, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes) through healthier diets can lead to healthier populations, lowering the risk of climate-related morbidity and mortality. Studies show that dietary improvements could prevent one in every five deaths worldwide. Healthier and more resilient ecosystems due to reduced fossil fuel and chemical use promoted through dietary changes also contribute to human health, in turn also increasing resilience to climate-related health impacts.
Biodiversity benefits
In addition, action under this policy option can also help to deliver on multiple KM-GBF targets, in particular:
- Target 7 (Reduce Pollution to Levels That Are Not Harmful to Biodiversity): FSBDGs can significantly reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides by encouraging efficient agricultural practices that optimize input use while preserving productivity. This approach contributes to healthier ecosystems, avoiding impacts like eutrophication and soil acidification. This ultimately leads to cleaner water systems and improved environmental quality.
- Target 10 (Enhance Biodiversity and Sustainability in Agriculture, Aquaculture, Fisheries, and Forestry): Promoting a diverse diet rich in plant-based foods through FSBDGs can protect species and ecosystems from monoculture farming, reducing habitat destruction and aiding wild species conservation. Additionally, guidelines can encourage sustainably sourced fish consumption to prevent overfishing and support marine biodiversity. By advocating for responsible aquaculture, FSBDGs help maintain healthy fish populations and preserve ecosystems.
- Target 13 (Increase the Sharing of Benefits from Genetic Resources, Digital Sequence Information and Traditional Knowledge): Incorporating traditional agricultural practices into dietary guidelines can enhance food security by promoting diverse, locally adapted crops and preserving essential genetic diversity. Additionally, benefit-sharing agreements can facilitate small-scale farmers accessing a range of plant genetic resources, enabling them to grow nutritious and climate-resilient crops.
- Target 14 (Integrate Biodiversity in Decision-Making at Every Level): Sustainable dietary guidelines can inform policymaking by providing evidence-based recommendations that highlight the importance of biodiversity in food systems. They can also foster cross-sectoral collaboration by linking health, agriculture, and environmental policies, encouraging various sectors to work together to create integrated approaches that address nutrition and biodiversity simultaneously.
- Target 21 (Ensure That Knowledge Is Available and Accessible To Guide Biodiversity Action): By identifying gaps in knowledge regarding sustainable practices and underutilized crops, guidelines can guide researchers toward innovative solutions that enhance both human nutrition and ecosystem health. Furthermore, engaging diverse stakeholders (e.g. governments, NGOs, farmers, and consumers) in the development and promotion of guidelines ensures local knowledge and practices are considered.
Other sustainable development benefits
Introducing FSBDGs can also help contribute to the progress of the following SDGs:
- SDG 2 (Zero Hunger): FSBDGs promote equitable access to nutritious foods, reducing hunger and malnutrition.
- SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being): They encourage healthier diets, lowering risks of diet-related diseases and improving overall well-being.
- SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production): They guide sustainable food choices, fostering production and consumption patterns with lower environmental footprints.
- SDG 14 (Life Below Water): They reduce demand for overexploited marine species, supporting the conservation of ocean biodiversity.
- SDG 15 (Life on Land): They promote diets with lower reliance on resource-intensive foods, helping protect terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity by reducing use of resources such as land, water, fossil fuels, fertilizers and pesticides.
Food consumption is a sensitive, personal topic, which means that individuals may be highly resistant to change their consumption habits. There are three main dimensions of sensitivities that often hinder dietary shifts:
- Socio-economic sensitivities: accessibility and affordability of healthy and sustainable foods; livelihoods tied to production of foods with high environmental impact.
- Political sensitivities: political interests and leverage of producers of foods with high environmental impact (e.g. meat industry).
- Cultural sensitivities: cultural values and identities attached to certain foods with high environmental impact (e.g. beef and dairy products).
Dietary guidelines can address these challenges and increase their effectiveness if adopted dietary guidelines are:
- Linked to other food-related policies (e.g. repurposing of food-related subsidies, public food procurement, food-related social security spending, livelihood support, recipe reformulation, food marketing and advertising regulations and/or policies for healthier food environments).
- Specific to different target groups to account for sensitivities, equity, accessibility and context-specific differences in: dietary needs (e.g. children, senior citizens, pregnant women); social factors (e.g. cultural norms/tastes, languages); economic factors (e.g. income levels); and geographic factors (e.g. rural vs. urban, food deserts).
- Invest in, establish, and promote universal access to social protection programs that directly enhance nutrition and food security. This requires analysis to determine the barriers to social protection system access and address them. It also requires ensuring participation from community-based, local organizations and stakeholders in the design, implementing, and monitoring process for policies and programs.
- Develop social programs (e.g. direct cash assistance, job training) to protect producers and other supply chain actors whose livelihoods depend on food products that are not recommended.
- Assist negatively affected actors with transitioning into other sectors or producing healthy foods.
Effective tracking of the integration of FSBDGs relies on strong monitoring tools, clear indicators, and structured frameworks that capture both implementation progress and related biodiversity and climate outcomes.
Indicators to monitor biodiversity outcomes
The Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to a comprehensive set of headline, component, and complementary indicators for tracking progress toward the targets of the KM-GBF. Some of these indicators could also be functional for monitoring the implementation of this policy option:
Tools to monitor biodiversity outcomes
Not identified
Tools to monitor climate outcomes
Sustainability Assessment of Foods and Diets (SAFAD)
SAFAD can be used to assess the environmental and social impacts of more than 1,800 foods and quantify the environmental footprint of different diets. It also allows users to model mitigation scenarios. Although the tool currently only provides data for nine European countries (France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden), it may still offer useful lessons for other contexts.
FAO EX-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT)
FAO EX-Ante Carbon-balance Tool provides users with a consistent way of estimating and tracking the outcomes of agricultural interventions on GHG emissions.
IRRI Greenhouse Gas Calculator
IRRI’s SECTOR Greenhouse Gas Calculator for cropland uses the IPCC Tier 2 approach and requires inputs from the user on cropping area, yield, and management practices.
Data not available.
Worldwide, more than 100 countries have developed food system-based dietary guidelines and 38 countries explicitly mention environmental sustainability components within them. Below are examples of dietary guidelines with sustainability considerations at the regional or national level:
- The Nordic nutrition recommendations is based on the latest scientific evidence and constitutes the basis for national dietary guidelines and nutrient recommendations in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The latest edition of the guidelines (published in 2023) incorporates recommendations on foods that are beneficial for the environment. The guidelines recommend a predominantly plant-based diet with a moderate intake of low-fat dairy products and limited intake of red meat and poultry.
- Denmark’s 2021 dietary guidelines were developed on the basis of a Danish scientific study and with the dual objective to encourage healthier but also more climate-friendly diets. Additionally, the implementation plan includes a wide range of communication activities and engagement with a large variety of stakeholders.
- Afshin, A., Sur, P. J., Fay, K. A., Cornaby, L., Ferrara, G., Salama, J. S., et al. (2019). Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet, 393(10184), 1958–1972.
- Aguirre-Sánchez, L., Teschner, R., Lalchandani, N. K., El Maohub, Y., & Suggs, L. S. (2023). Climate Change Mitigation Potential in Dietary Guidelines: A Global Review. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 40, 558–570.
- Ahmed, S., Downs, S., & Fanzo, J. (2019). Advancing an Integrative Framework to Evaluate Sustainability in National Dietary Guidelines. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 3, 479129.
- Ainuson-Quampah, J., Amuna, N. N., Holdsworth, M., & Aryeetey, R. (2022). A review of food-based dietary guidelines in Africa: opportunities to enhance the healthiness and environmental sustainability of population diets. African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, 22(2), 19471–19495.
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- Arthur, M. (2020). Multi-stakeholder engagement in governing food systems : review and synthesis. Retrieved January 9, 2025, from https://hdl.handle.net/10625/63180
- Belgacem, W., Mattas, K., Arampatzis, G., & Baourakis, G. (2021). Changing Dietary Behavior for Better Biodiversity Preservation: A Preliminary Study. Nutrients, 13(6), 2076.
- Committee on World Food Security (CFS) (2024). CFS Policy Recommendations on Reducing Inequalities for Food Security and Nutrition (First draft). Available from https://www.fao.org/cfs/workingspace/workstreams/inequalities-workstream/en/.
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