Healthier ready meals could cut EU emissions by 48 million tonnes annually, save customers €2.8 billion (£2.4 billion) annually and reduce disease, a report has found.
Fast food and ready meals provide more than a sixth of the EU’s calories, but contain far more salt and meat than doctors recommend, according to an analysis by consultancy Systemiq on behalf of non-profit environmental organizations Fern and Madre Brava.
They found that imposing minimum health and sustainability standards on the companies that sell most of them would bring ‘huge’ benefits to society.
“Making ready meals healthier and more sustainable is a no-regrets policy,” said Eduardo Montero Mansilla of the Spanish Consumers and Users Federation, one of ten non-governmental organizations co-authoring the report. “We can improve the health of people and the planet at affordable prices.”
The report examined the effects of forcing major food companies to adhere to the diets of the World Health Organization, which aims to prevent malnutrition and non-communicable diseases, and the EAT-Lancet Commission, which examines both damage to the environment and man tries to reduce.
In both cases, they found that ready-to-eat meals should contain, on average, about half as much refined grains and two-thirds as much meat, as well as “significantly” more legumes.
While the report shows that this would save consumers €2.8 billion in cheaper food and reduce emissions by 48 million tonnes annually, it did not take into account the additional economic benefits of hospitals spending less money on treating patients and employers who lose less money because employees take sick leave.
“We are currently living in a nutrition-related health crisis,” said Alba Gil of the European Public Health Alliance, who co-authored the report. “Our dietary habits determine our health and therefore our future. It only makes sense that policymakers regulate the environment in which we consume food to make it healthy and affordable by design.”
Livestock are responsible for 12 to 20% of global warming pollution and increase rates of heart disease and cancer in wealthy countries, where the average person eats more meat than doctors recommend.
Climate scientists are clear that switching from animal to plant proteins is a powerful step to prevent the planet from warming, although doctors are unsure how little meat is best for human health. The EAT-Lancet committee, which is meeting this year to propose a wider range of diets and address concerns about micronutrient deficiencies in the planetary health diet, currently recommends eating meat about once a week and twice a week fish per week.
The NGOs called on the EU to require major food companies to comply with health and sustainability guidelines for ready-made meals sold in the EU. The report did not analyze how consumers would react to such a proposal.
Paul Behrens, an environmental change researcher at Leiden University who has studied food systems and who was not involved in the research, said: “This report is pragmatic in that it suggests that not every meal has to be optimally healthy, but that it The entire range of caterers and retailers must meet the nutritional guidelines.”
He added: “If policymakers were to follow this advice, it would create a much healthier eating culture that would benefit the planet, our wellbeing and our wallets.”